


The Signal

by dednberried



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Space, F/F, F/M, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dednberried/pseuds/dednberried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Quorum ship SQ-9 picks up a random signal from a dark and empty zone of space, Captain Regina Mills finds herself with a dilemma: chief science officer Dr. Rupert Gold seems desperate to investigate the source - perhaps desperate to the point of mutiny. With help from her crew, and a civilian bounty hunter, Captain Mills tries to determine whether the signal is a benign communication from an advanced alien race, or something far more sinister.</p>
<p>Alternate universe outer space dorkery with "Once Upon a Time" characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The captain and the signal

“Captain to the bridge.”  
  
The voice is blunt, masculine, and - despite the use of cutting edge vocal simulation technology - coldly digital. The summons rattles around in the air like coins in a shaken glass jar, startling Regina Mills out of a deep sleep.  
  
“Captain to the bridge.”  
  
She sits bolt upright in bed and clears her throat before speaking toward the ceiling intercom. Her voice, dulled and thickened by slumber, is only a shade less robotic than the ship computer’s irritating drone.  
  
“Acknowledged. Proceeding.”  
  
The speaker issues a trill, signaling that Captain Mills’ response has been logged. Large glowing red block numbers near the intercom show the time as 00:48, not even an hour into third watch. This indicates a substantive reason for her summons and spurs her into action.    
  
She triggers her cabin lighting, catches a quick freshening spray in the dry shower, smoothes a brush through her short dark locks and slips on the trousers and jacket that comprise her Quorum uniform.  
  
The dark blue worn by senior officers suits her bronzed complexion. Her black boots, meticulously polished at six every evening, catch the light. Rank insignia, twin golden bars, gleam at her collar. With a quick swipe of the cosmetic activator wand, implanted sub-rosa pigments darken her lips, cheeks, lashes and eyelids to the modest level of morning makeup.  
  
This routine is so honed, so pared down that it takes Regina only three minutes to transform from a sleep-rumpled woman to an ideal military specimen. Lean and strong, with a comely countenance suited for popular media or vapid social celebrity, she has scrupulously avoided trading on her looks.  
  
Not that beauty would have gotten her to this station in life. Fair-faced idiots do not helm Quorum ships.  
  
She stands before her mirror, squares her shoulders and schools her features into the cool mask she’s come to think of as her ‘command face’. She wonders (for an instant, no more) what her mother would make of the pin-neat outfit, the unassuming makeup and flinty expression.  
  
Almost instantly, she hears Cora Mills chuckle and snipe from the recesses of her mind: _“You look like a groveling Quorum slave…and a bit of a dyke.”_  
  
Regina sneers at her reflection, shakes her head as her mother’s voice fades away. The uniform cut is quite masculine, she can’t argue that point. But she’s no slave. Not here, and never again.  
  
On this ship, among the deadly quiet stars, she flies fully beyond her mother’s grasp, and largely beyond the smothering attention of Quorum superiors. She earned her rank, earned her command, then chose the swaddling solitude of a deep space exploration posting where nothing happened for a solid six months.  
  
Well, almost nothing. Three weeks back, the ship was buffeted by a freak energy wave after a nebular explosion, and the resulting nacelle torsion caused a massive selenium leak. Big picture, all that meant was the ship was sort of low on fuel, and that problem would soon be solved by a mining stop at a selenium-rich asteroid belt. Engine woes aside, the voyage had offered six months of beautifully predictable monotony.  
  
Until this mystery event she’s been summoned to manage at almost one in the morning.  
  
It’s a short walk from her quarters to the bridge, and her footfalls echo through the empty hallway. When the doors open and she sees nearly a quarter of her 40-person crew working the bridge, buzzing from station to station, Regina realizes that something of note has indeed happened.  
  
“Report,” she barks, striding to her chair and effectively taking the conn from her startled executive officer.  
  
Commander Daniel Hayes steps away from the communications board, hands over a data pad and addresses Regina in a low, gentle voice. “Long-range scans pulled a signal about thirty minutes ago, a random tonal sequence seemingly broadcast from dead space. Stellar nav has no record of a fixed body in the origination zone, and there are no transitory objects on predicted trajectories.”  
  
Regina curiously regards the signal data graphs on the pad. There is little or no visible order, and analysis reveals no pattern discernible by the Quorum’s extensive interpretive database of energy signatures. Re-imagined as sheet music, it could be a symphony written on accident, or intentionally composed by a madman.  
  
She traces a finger over the scattered notes and recalls the horrible, atonal music so popular among her mother’s cultured coterie. Teenaged Regina once remarked that it sounded like a cello raping a tuba, and earned a corrective slap for her crass humor.    
  
“A chaotic energy signal beamed from the middle of nowhere. Possibly worth waking up for,” Regina muses, then raises her voice to address her chief science officer. “What say you, Dr. Gold?”  
  
The slight, shaggy-haired academic hunched near the communications board does not respond. Eyes squeezed shut, he presses a set of headphones tight against his ears, as if he’s trying to urge the tones deeper into his mind, to trap them and solve them like one of his beloved labyrinthine equations. Regina, innately envious of such transportive rapture, merely smirks at Gold’s obliviousness.  
  
Ensign Belle French, the doctor’s keen little right hand, clouts him on the shoulder to get his attention. He starts and blinks, scowling as if yanked from a pleasant trance. Irritated, Gold shouts at her. “GOD’S SAKES, GIRL! I MUST FOCUS!”  
  
Belle, ever patient with her pet genius - even when he bites - only tilts her head toward the captain. Gold looks over and breaks into a toothy grin.  
  
“REGINA! YOU MUST HEAR THIS!” He removes his headphones and leaps toward her chair with spritely energy. “IT’S BEAUTIFUL!” he shouts once more, before noticing his excessive volume and flinching in embarrassment. As he offers Regina the headphones, his hands are shaking. “Truly wondrous,” Gold proclaims. “Like angels singing Euclid.”  
  
Skeptical, Regina slips the headphones over her ears and instantly, faintly, winces. To placate the doctor, she gives it her best effort, but the tones loop and dive through her mind, evading her every attempt to organize them into logical patterns. She cannot discern any resemblance to mathematics or language, nor contextualize this swarm of noise as a message with content or purpose.  
  
With a small shake of her head, she returns the headphones to Gold. “I’m afraid it’s all Greek to me, Rupert.”  
  
“You’re listening incorrectly,” he snaps, draping the headphones around his neck. “Don’t hunt for words and numbers; hear the _shapes_.”  
  
Regina lifts a brow. She hears only noise seeping from the headphone speakers and cannot understand his assertion. “Shapes.”  
  
“Yes! The signal is spotty, and too dense with information to pull anything freehand, but I swear I can discern a triangular repetition. Within a spherical matrix! Can you imagine?”  
  
She cannot. Regina clenches her teeth. She hates not being able to follow his line of thought, but esoteric matters were never her strong suit. She took Gold’s course at the academy and ending up dropping it after a couple of weeks in favor of a plasma mechanics lab.  
  
Still, the signal seems interesting enough to keep Gold occupied for a while, maybe curb his incessant pleading to visit every barren rock in the quadrant. She decides to follow up as soon as more pressing matters are attended.  
  
“You should recruit a couple of ensigns from astrometry and continue your analysis,” Regina suggests. “We have at least a week before we reach the Heigen Belt -”     
  
“No! No, no, no.” Gold shakes his head, sending hair across his wild eyes. “We cannot abandon this discovery to visit some pedestrian asteroid belt! We must follow up on this, alter course and trace the signal to its source. I believe cohesion will strengthen with proximity, thereby increasing the likelihood of a correct interpretation. This could be a message, Regina!”  
  
“Doctor,” Regina begins, smoothing her voice in an effort to calm her colleague. “I understand your excitement; this signal seems truly unique and I assure you we will not abandon the inquiry. However, our trip to the Heigen Belt is an absolute necessity. The belt is rich in selenium and we must mine ore to keep the engines running. I will not prioritize scientific exploration over the soundness of the ship.”  
  
Gold snorts and shakes his head again, looking disgusted and disbelieving as he leans in close to her. “You disappoint me, _captain_. You are dismissing what could be a primary contact opportunity with profound alien intelligence in favor of… a trip to the bloody gas station!”  
  
Daniel steps forward, angling his body to wedge Gold away from Regina. “I think maybe you need to rest, doc. Start fresh in the morning with a clear head.”  
  
Belle approaches and lays a hand on Gold’s shoulder, which he immediately shrugs off. He waves a warning finger at Daniel. “I know you mean well, Sonny Jim, but horse sense has no place in this debate.”  
  
Levering quickly out of her chair, Regina forces Daniel sideways and Gold stumbles backward.  
  
“This is no debate, doctor,” she says, raising her voice just enough to draw stares from crewmen across the bridge. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you need to get hold of yourself and observe the chain of command. I’ve given you my decision. Abide by it, respect it, or you’ll find yourself navel gazing in the brig. Understood?”  
  
Almost nose to nose, the doctor and the captain stare each other down until he finally heaves a breath, latches onto her cheeks and pinches hard enough to leave angry red fingerprints. Just as Regina reaches up to break his hold, he releases her and spins away.  
  
“Far be it from me to question the wisdom of her majesty, the captain,” he calls back over his shoulder, while flinging the headphones onto the comm console. “You were a disappointing student, Regina! Such potential, shredded and stuffed into a uniform to make another Quorum puppet. Sad, sad, sad.”  
  
His tirade complete, Gold exits with Ensign French at his heels. A cold silence falls over the bridge. Only the erratic noise of the signal, leaking from Gold’s headphones, breaks the quiet. Daniel touches Regina’s shoulder and she flinches in surprise. His touch - in private, during moments of dull loneliness - is occasionally welcome. This is not such an occasion.  
  
“I don’t know what just happened,” she confides, rubbing gingerly at her face. “I’ve known Gold since the academy, and that was aberrant behavior.”  
  
Daniel pauses thoughtfully and offers a theory. “You know, he’s scoured every rock we’ve passed for six months and found no sign of his son’s ship. Maybe he’s getting desperate.”  
  
Regina closes her eyes and sighs. She hadn’t even considered that Gold might hope the signal was a clue, a trail of breadcrumbs leading to answers about his missing child - a transport pilot whose ship vanished in this quadrant of space almost two years ago.  
  
“You could be right,” she admits to Daniel. “Stress may be to blame.”    
  
“Should we keep eyes on him?” he suggests. “I can post a security officer outside his lab, another to monitor his quarters.”  
  
Regina shakes her head. “No, that would only inflame him further. Besides, Quorum security is required to log and report all errant crew behavior. I don’t want Rupert’s record stained just because he got grabby and yelled a little… but I don’t want to be taken by surprise if he acts up again.”  
  
Daniel sighs and scratches his nose. He gives Regina a sympathetic little smile. “That leaves one other option.”  
  
She lowers her head and shuts her eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. “The marshal.”  
  
“I’ll go talk to her,” Daniel offers, but Regina waves him off.  
  
“I want to visit engineering, check the ore manifest again. She’s on my way.”  
  
As she cedes command by heading for the exit, Regina points at the communications board and snaps out one final order.  
  
“Record the signal on a non-networked drive, but mute the audio. I suspect that noise might be bad for morale.”  
  
Daniel snickers at her mild joke. “Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, huh?”  
  
Regina catches his eyes just as the doors close. She does not look amused.


	2. The marshal and the party

 

The Quorum, like most government entities, often uses subcontractors for unsavory jobs. This limits legal liability, cuts costs (bonuses, insurance, retirement and other silly perquisites), and insulates the Quorum’s reputation from damage when such unsavory jobs result in negative media coverage.  
  
When the SQ-9 left port six months ago, Captain Regina Mills’ crew consisted of 39 career soldiers, technicians, and scientists trained at the academy and versed in military protocol. The fortieth member of her crew boasts no such pedigree.  
  
Crewman 40 is a citizen marshal paid to ride along on the ship and apprehend any wanted criminals they might encounter, freeze them in cryogenic stasis, and eventually return these villains to Quorum custody. This person is the only crew member not technically under the captain’s command.  
  
That simple distinction makes Marshal Emma Swan the single biggest pain in Regina Mills’ metaphorical ass.  
  
Yet her very exemption from the chain of command makes her the ideal choice for clandestine chores, since she is under no obligation to log and report her activities - unless she’s angling for a bounty. For this reason alone, Regina finds herself outside Emma Swan’s cabin at 01:12, chiming the door and idly hoping the woman is in good temper after being awakened at such an hour.  
  
After three chimes (exactly two seconds in duration, spaced at five second intervals), the door cracks open and Regina realizes she needn’t have feared waking the marshal. She hears music - something mid-tempo with too much bass - and laughter and the clinking of glasses. There is, evidently, a party in progress.  
  
Emma Swan stands just behind the slivered opening and calls to her guests. “I’m paying this time. You guys catch the next one.”  
  
She opens the door happy and half-dressed and clearly expecting anyone but Regina Mills, since her joy visibly pops and shrivels like a balloon over a fire. She glances back toward her guests, then steps into the hall and closes the door.  
  
“Hey. What’s wrong?” Emma asks, in a solemn whisper.  
  
Regina makes a half-hearted attempt to scoff. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”  
  
Emma crosses her arms and smirks. “It’s sorta late. You usually swing by to bitch me out during office hours, so I figure something’s gone sideways.”  
  
Regina won’t give her the pleasure of a direct confirmation. She stands stiffly, wringing her hands behind her back. “I require your help with a rather delicate personnel matter.” She looks up and down the hall, seeing no one but fearing someone will happen upon them. “May we discuss this in your quarters? You are somewhat…underdressed.”  
  
The marshal wears only a white tank top and red briefs, but seems more comfortable than the captain in her sleek uniform. Regina has never seen her so exposed, and she finds herself charting an alarming number of scars across Emma’s toned arms and chest. Hazards of the job, she guesses, since very few criminals willingly surrender to Quorum justice.  
  
“People on this deck have seen me in a lot less,” Emma teases, waggling her brows. “To spare you from scandal, you should probably get inside before the PX delivery guy shows up.”  
  
Emma slips through the door and leaves it fully open before Regina can respond. She has little choice but to follow her hostess inside, though she gives the hallway another quick scan before shutting the door. The music stops and the jovial chatter dives into silence as Emma’s guests recognize that the captain has come calling.  
  
Sat at the kitchen table are two of her crew, navigation specialist Lt. Killian Jones and engineer Lt. Ruby Lucas. Dismantled crystal cubes and numbered tiles litter the table, indicating the three just completed a spirited game of Tesseract. A half-empty bottle of spice liquor and several crushed ale cans indicate the three consumed an injudicious quantity of alcohol during their contest.  
  
Also of note? Lucas and Jones wear so few clothes between them as to make Emma Swan appear fully dressed. Regina blushes, averts her eyes and wonders just what kind of party she has interrupted.  
  
“Sorry, guys,” Emma says, scurrying into the room. She drapes a silky robe over Lt. Lucas’ shoulders and slams a giant throw pillow into Lt. Jones’ lap.  
  
He whimpers on impact then grumbles, clutching the pillow to his bare chest. “You did that on purpose.”  
  
“Payback,” Emma confirms, “since you literally cheated my pants off.”  
  
Ruby wraps herself in the borrowed robe and glances toward Captain Mills. “He ratchets up the vibrations in his mech hand so the cubes shake apart when his turn ends.”  
  
“Slander!” Jones cries, waving his lifelike cybernetic left hand in protest. “Don’t believe them, captain. It’s a poor gambler who cries foul with every loss.”  
  
“Don’t fret, lieutenant. I’m fairly certain Miss Swan lost her trousers the old fashioned way,” Regina says, fixing her eyes on the marshal. “Poor judgement.”  
  
“Ouch,” Emma says, chuckling and finger-painting a vertical line in the air. “Score one for the funny lady.”  
  
Regina bites back the urge to gloat. “Yes. Well. I do apologize for intruding, but I require a word with the marshal. Miss Swan, if you would dress and accompany me to my quarters -”  
  
“I’m not going anywhere,” Emma says firmly, and takes a seat at the table.  
  
Jones and Lucas seem discomfited by the outright refusal, but the captain is familiar with Swan’s stubbornness. Regina regroups quickly and tries another tactic: conciliation. She attempts a smile and raises her open palms.  
  
“I assure you, marshal, I won’t lecture you on administrative protocols or whatever other torturous upbraiding you suspect awaits. This is no trivial matter.”  
  
Emma gestures to her semi-nude companions and the spoils of their misspent evening. “Neither is this.”  
  
Regina snorts softly. “Perhaps you should look up the word ‘trivial.’ I believe you’ll find that _this_ is the very definition.”  
  
“Maybe we should go, Em,” Ruby whispers, nervously twining a hand in her auburn hair.  
  
“Stay put, red,” Emma says, patting her arm before hitting Regina with a disarming, pleading stare. “Here’s the thing, Captain Mills: I haven’t seen my friends in weeks because they’ve been killing themselves to keep this ship in shape. Killian pulled thirteen straight double shifts to find a faster, safer route to the Heigen Belt, and Ruby has been slaving away retrofitting the…something.”  
  
“Exhaust manifolds,” Lt. Lucas supplies.  
  
“Yeah, that. To tune up the engines and stretch the selenium burn. Right?”  
  
Ruby smiles at Emma. “Aww. You were actually listening to me gripe.”  
  
“Of course I listened,” Emma says. “You sounded borderline suicidal.”  
  
Now that she’s taking the time to look, Regina sees that the two officers do look worse for wear, with dark circles around their eyes and a certain exhausted slump to their shoulders. She also notes that Lt. Lucas has a number of cuts on her hands and forearms, likely from crawling through hot service conduits without gloves or jacket, which she is wont to do.  
  
“I’m aware of their superlative efforts,” Regina offers. “Lieutenants Jones and Lucas have performed admirably and I have noted such in their service records. Commendations will likely be issued on our return to port.”  
  
“Wow. That’s just…so beautiful. Really gets me right here,” Emma says, tapping a finger over her heart. “And gold stars on their report cards might suffice, if they were androids. They’re not. They worked like beasts and solved a major problem, and now your faithful - but very _human_ \- crewmen need to relax and blow off some steam.”  
  
As she speaks, Emma pours two fingers of spice liquor into a glass, slides it across the table, and kicks out a chair for Regina.  
  
“I’m, like, 97 percent sure that you’re human, too,” she says. “Take a load off. Have a drink with us. Then we’ll duck into the bedroom for a private chat. You’ll tell me what’s going on, and if I’m able to help you, I probably will.”  
  
Regina frowns, crosses her arms. “Probably?”  
  
The marshal shrugs and essays an innocent grin. “I’m mercurial.”  
  
“You’re a juvenile mercenary acting out your resentment of authority by needling the nearest responsible adult,” Regina accuses.  
  
At that, Emma issues a quick, throaty laugh. “Make that 98 percent certain. Androids can’t pull off irony.”  
  
Regina almost points out that her assessment of Emma Swan was serious, accurate, and baldly devoid of irony…until she realizes what the marshal meant: that she, Regina (the responsible adult), instigates the needling of Emma (the immature rebel) because she resents her _rejection_ of authority.  
  
She is at once impressed by the girl’s wit and infuriated by her presumption. For a moment, she considers leaving and simply reporting Dr. Gold to ship security, letting him face the consequences for insubordination and, technically, assaulting a superior officer. But, no. Regina cannot throw her old teacher to the wolves for a moment’s indiscretion, and neither can she leave him unsupervised after such a volatile display.  
  
Damn it to hell. She will not leave here without securing Emma Swan’s assistance.    
  
If Regina needs to be perceived as sociable to get what she needs from the marshal, so be it. Besides, fraternizing (just this once) with two of her most competent (and popular) crewmen could boost ship morale and thaw her icy reputation.  
  
With that in mind, Regina takes a seat and tosses back the spice liquor. The woody cinnamon burn makes her eyes water and blur, which is merciful since she suspects her near-naked crewmen are goggling at her and she really doesn’t want to witness that. She turns the glass rim-down and slides it back to Emma.  
  
“Tragically, you are the only unaffiliated quasi law enforcement officer in this region of space. My options are limited,” Regina says. She carefully stands and steps away from the table. There are two doors behind her and she does not want to accidentally march into a closet. “Now. Which one is the bedroom?”  
  
Smiling like starlight, Emma points left.  
  
Regina shocks her cuffs, straightens her uniform jacket. “Don’t keep me waiting, Miss Swan,” she says, realizing too late that her low tone sounds equal parts hostile and…lascivious.  
  
Despite the throw pillow corner stuffed in his mouth, Killian Jones’ muffled, wicked laughter reaches her ears.  
  
Captain Mills decides to rescind his commendation endorsement.  
  


 


	3. The herbs and the second signal

 

 

The orderliness of the marshal’s inner sanctum surprises Regina. She expected disarray, dingy colors, clashing patterns, and wads of rumpled laundry. But Emma Swan’s bedroom is mostly open floor space, and looks clean as a whistle.  
  
The marshal has one piece of furniture, a single bed bolted to the far wall, draped with a blue and white floral duvet and bearing a small foam pillow. The rest of her room is dominated by magnetic shelves, floor to ceiling on every wall, lined with dozens of dark metal bottles and cases of various size and shape.  
  
Regina tells herself she doesn’t care what Emma Swan might be storing or hoarding or smuggling in these mystery containers. She stands in the room’s center and rocks on her heels for a minute, two minutes, three… and then she gives in to curiosity.  
  
She approaches a shelf and plucks a random bottle from its magnetic mooring. The moment Regina touches the bottle, her skin completes a circuit and triggers automatic lighting around the shelving unit. This provides helpful - and incriminating - illumination, just as Emma slips into the room and shuts the door.  
  
“Sorry that took so long. I had trouble finding my clothes, and then the food delivery finally came, but there were no forks, so they decided to improvise chopsticks from Tesseract beams,” Emma explains. “It was a whole thing.”  
  
Regina notes with some relief that Emma now wears her usual outfit of stretchy black polymer trousers (a plain cut, but nigh indestructible) and a dark red pullover sweater, darned in multiple spots with different colored threads. She remains barefoot, but has gathered her lengthy blonde mane into a ponytail. For someone who has been drinking for hours, her eyes are remarkably bright.  
  
Though she surely notices the lighted shelf and Regina’s uneasy expression, Emma doesn’t seem bothered by the captain’s plundering.  
  
“I understand the delay; you couldn’t leave your guests naked, drunk _and_ starving,” Regina says while casually replacing the bottle. “Though I grew bored and couldn’t help wondering…”  
  
“Yeah,” Emma says, waving at the lit shelf. “My traveling pharmacy.”  
  
Regina’s eyes widen, and Emma intuits the captain’s fear that she is peddling illicit drugs.  
  
“All legal, all for personal use,” Emma assures her. “I work alone, so I usually treat my own wounds. I buy herbs for cheap, make bactericides, analgesics, tinctures. Some of ‘em smell like hot garbage, but they work pretty well.”  
  
Regina squints, finding the whole idea so alien that she doesn’t think through her next question. “Why not just see a physician?”  
  
Emma gives her a puzzled look. “Umm…because civilian doctors see me coming and lock their doors?” she answers. “I’m a non-Quorum contract worker in a Grade 9 hazard profession. I have no fixed address. All the actuaries say I should have been dead six years ago, which makes me officially uninsurable and unwelcome in every clinic from here to the event horizon.”  
  
The captain is momentarily nonplussed by Emma’s sobering explanation. Economic status is a non-factor for Quorum members; in service, there is no poor, no rich, only rank and merit. Conversely, civilians still live in a stratified system where the wealthy enjoy comfort and safety and medical care while the Emma Swans of the world fend for themselves.  
  
Regina is aware of this unjust duality. She simply doesn’t have reason to ponder it very often.  
  
Regina Mills was born rich, and her only deprivations were temporary and parent-supervised. Cora starved her to fit into doll-sized ball gowns, confined her to her rooms for being willful, ruined her friendships with those unable to elevate her status. Those trials ended when Regina reached 17 and escaped to the academy - her safe haven, a citadel even her socially connected mother could not breach.  
  
Some people, Regina knows, never find their citadel. When life wounds them, they stanch the bleeding, stitch themselves up, and keep moving because they have no other choice. They live without hope of safe havens, or even true homes. That, she believes, is not fair.  
  
“While on this ship, you may visit our physician for any necessary medical care,” Regina says, abrupt and flat, hoping the marshal will not read much into the offer.  
  
Spoiling that hope, Emma flashes a half smile. “Isn’t that against the rules?”  
  
“I’ll note the exception in my logs,” Regina says, dismissively waving a hand. “Captain’s discretion.”  
  
The marshal bites her lower lip and makes a small, apologetic noise. “Thank you, really, but I’d rather avoid sick bay if I can help it. Your doctor is one twisted sister.”  
  
Regina doesn’t know Dr. Alan Whale personally, and has had no cause to visit sick bay since embarking. She is intrigued by this odd assessment. “That’s a rather vague accusation.”  
  
“I’d be talking out of school if I said more, but in his case, M.D. stands for macabre dickhead,” Emma says, pursing her lips and shuddering. “So barring loss of limbs or massive internal trauma, I’m cool on my own.”  
  
“Fine. Suit yourself.” Mildly stung by the rejection, Regina retreats to firm-jawed ‘command face,’ but that only triggers prickling pain where Gold mauled her cheeks.  
  
Making matters worse, Emma notices her discomfort. “I’m guessing that flinch has something to do with why you’re here.”  
  
Regina swallows hard and sketches the situation as neatly as possible. “Earlier this evening, comms intercepted an unusual signal originating from dead space. Dr. Gold insisted we investigate immediately. When I informed him we would not deviate from present course until we’ve refueled, he became agitated and…”  
  
“Grabbed your cheeks like a mean teacher trying to make you cry,” Emma provides, with a knowing look.  
  
The captain rolls her eyes at this characterization, though she can’t deny that was exactly how it felt when Gold dismissed her as a foolish child and lashed out in frustration.  
  
Quite without warning, Emma steps closer, well into Regina’s personal space, and surveys her marred skin. She reaches up and brushes the pad of her thumb across the captain’s cheek.  
  
“What -” On reflex, Regina angles her head away. “What are you doing?”  
  
“Hold on. Let me see,” Emma whispers. “Maybe I can save you a trip to Dr. Strange.”  
  
“I’m not the one who’s afraid of doctors,” Regina snips.  
  
“I’m not afraid of him, I am repulsed by him,” Emma clarifies. “And that’s not the point. You’re here because you don’t want an official inquiry. A Quorum doctor would log your treatment, as well as the cause of injury. Either you want this off-book or you don’t.”  
  
After a moment’s thought, Regina gives a nod of consent. It takes effort, but she holds still as the marshal gently palpates her face with cool fingertips. She looks all around the room - at the shelves, the ceiling, the bed - before her gaze finally settles on Emma Swan.  
  
The marshal’s incongruously pretty face shows little cosmetic enhancement; Regina discerns eyelash grafts and a light lip pigment, perhaps a bit of color dusted along high cheekbones. She marks a few scars, a tiny vertical split in the left eyebrow and two fine lines across the bridge of her nose, that escaped prior notice.  
  
She also notes that in this light, at this range, Emma’s eyes are green as forest moss. Regina had been certain they were blue, and she is rarely mistaken when appraising other women.  
  
Cora trained her to log deficits and strengths in the fairer sex like a fighter evaluating potential opponents, and it’s a hard habit to break. Over the years, her calculated staring has sparked dozens of unwanted conversations with strange women, some of whom mistook Regina’s attention for attraction and slipped her their ID numbers.  
  
She never called any of them. Maybe she should have, Regina thinks. Maybe it would have surprised her, being with a woman. They could have been nice, those women, warm and strong and clever and easier to talk to than she imagined. Maybe she was wrong to keep her distance.  
  
And maybe the marshal’s eyes are both green and blue, shifting like moodstones, tinted by emotion. Blue when drinking socially with her friends, green when appraising the injuries of her -  
  
“Lady, you are gonna have some nasty bruises in the morning,” Emma says, drawing Regina out of spiraling rumination. “Bet it hurts more than you’re letting on.”  
  
“Hmm,” Regina replies, a noncommittal noise that somehow makes Emma’s mouth flatten to a hard line.  
  
It does hurt. The marshal is right. She’s also standing very near and regarding Regina very intently, inspiring the captain to sympathy for all those women she examined into nervous conversation, insecurity, or misguided lust.  
  
The scrutiny is unsettling, the closeness unfamiliar. People simply don’t encroach on Regina this way. That’s the entire point of ‘command face,’ which she can’t quite manage at the moment because the numbing grace of shock has worn off and one shot of spice liquor isn’t enough to deaden nerves, and _yes_. It’s starting to hurt.  
  
Emma’s hands clench and fall back to her sides. She takes a slow step backward, then turns to her shelves and retrieves a small bottle, which she tosses to Regina.  
  
The captain examines the bottle’s smooth metal surface, finds no writing or symbology to tell one what might be inside. “And this is?”  
  
“Magic.” Emma winks and sits on the edge of her bed. “For bruises, anyway. Vitamin K, arnica, and licorice root to disperse pooled blood and soothe the ache.”  
  
Regina pops the vacuum seal cap and takes a cautious sniff. It’s a strong herbal hit, but far more pleasant than the ‘hot garbage’ smell she expected.  
  
“Apply generously before bed, again when you wake, then as needed throughout the day,” Emma says. “That should be enough to get you by, but if you need more, just ask.”  
  
Regina slips the bottle into her jacket pocket. The lone gap on Emma’s orderly shelf stands out like a missing tooth and makes her feel strangely guilty. She eyes the larger cases on lower shelves. “So is all this related to your amateur apothecary hobby?”  
  
“Nah, s’mostly tools of the trade. Surveillance gear, cryo-prep kits, restraints. Plus a few special implements designed to make knuckleheads more… tractable,” Emma says, as she absently touches a cluster of puncture scars just above her heart. “Speaking of which - how can I help you with Gold?”  
  
“Watch him, discreetly. If he demonstrates further erratic behavior, report to me and I’ll decide on a course of action.”  
  
“Erratic behavior.” The marshal’s hands flex and contract into fists. “Meaning if he hits you again.”  
  
“Dr. Gold did not strike me,” Regina corrects. “However, if he attempts to lay hands on me again, he will find me considerably more… intractable.”  
  
For some reason, this makes Emma smile. Her hands relax open atop her thighs. “Good,” she says. “Give ‘em hell.”  
  
Unsure how one graciously acknowledges an endorsement for reciprocal violence, Regina blinks for a moment, then gives the marshal a firm nod on her way to the bedroom door. “I’ll expect to hear from you within twelve hours, unless there is cause to report sooner.”  
  
Emma springs off the bed and reaches the door first. She grabs the lever and pauses, seemingly lost for words. “If you… you know…if you need more stuff for the bruises, just let me know. It’s no trouble.”  
  
Regina pats her jacket pocket. “Thank you. I’m sure this will suffice.”  
  
Emma nods, shrugs, sighs. “Okay. So. See you tomorrow. Or later today, huh? Because it’s already today.”  
  
“Yes.” Regina doesn’t know why, but she feels sweetly stuck, like an ant in honey. “I should go.”  
  
“Yeah. Be sure to check the hall before you leave. Wouldn’t want to be seen leaving my quarters at this hour. People talk, right?”  
  
“Yes, they do.” Regina does not snipe that the marshal already gives crew gossips plenty to talk about; it seems gauche after she’s been so hospitable. And Regina doesn’t feel much like sniping anyway.  
  
“Hey, I’m not sleeping with…” Emma says, trailing off, though she presumably means the mostly naked Lt. Jones and/or Lt. Lucas, eating take-out food with board game parts in the marshal’s kitchen. “You know. In case you were wondering.”  
  
Within seconds, Regina feels her ears burn - the sign of a deep, full-body blush. “The Quorum discourages personal entanglements between captain and crew, so their sex lives are truly not my concern.”  
  
“Right,” Emma says, and opens the door. Pointedly, she raises her voice so her friends in the kitchen hear her loud and clear. “And that, Regina, is exactly why I’m elated not to be a member of your crew.”  
  
Emma brushes past her in the doorway, close enough for Regina to feel her warmth, to smell the eclectic mix of spice liquor and sweet flora and musty gun oil wafting off Emma’s hair and skin and clothes.  
  
The captain takes a moment to steady herself, then charges for the front door, snapping off a quick “As you were,” to her officers as she blows past.  
  
Outside and down the hall and in the lift by a count of ten; then, then she breathes.  
  
Disappointing student though she may have been, Regina easily deciphers the signal Emma Swan just broadcast. It dovetails into the question of her evening, posed by the puckish universe in two very different ways: stay the course, or investigate?  
  
She enters her darkened quarters, unfastens her jacket and slumps on her cold bed. From her pocket, she takes a gifted bottle of relief and massages the warmed oil onto her face. As she pulls up the covers and drifts back toward sleep, Regina doesn’t imagine shapes dancing through astral noise; she thinks of green moss growing on rocks in the Maine woods, and blue sky blanketing the treetops.  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. The dreams and the bookworms

 

  
  
A friend on overnight PX duty informed Emma that Ensign Belle French always dines ahead of the rush, reading alone at a corner table. So Marshal Emma Swan, after a half-night bender and a troubled sleep, stumbles out of bed at six and hits the commissary by six-fifteen. She’s nursing sugary coffee and waiting at the counter for pancakes and orange juice when Belle arrives solo with a Libris pad tucked under her arm.  
  
“Morning,” Emma says to her, smiling faintly when Belle responds in kind.  
  
She cocks her head and openly examines the ensign’s fancy gadget. The Libris’ nanopolymer interface mimics an old leather-bound book, complete with faux vellum pages you can turn, dog-ear and scribble on with a fingernail, but the unit rewrites and rebinds itself anew on command, converting to a facsimile of any book published in the last three millennia. It costs more than the marshal’s last dozen bounties combined.  
  
“Nifty,” Emma says. “What’re you reading?”  
  
Belle seems pleasantly surprised by the interest. “Some really cracking old Earth popular fiction. Stories about a boy wizard and his friends, fighting evil, growing up, falling in love…”  
  
“Harry Potter,” Emma says, nodding.  
  
“Yes!” Belle smiles so brightly it hurts Emma’s bleary eyes. “You’ve read Rowling?”  
  
“Long time ago,” Emma replies. “Fact? Hermione Granger was a razor.”  
  
Belle snickers and bobs her head. “Undisputed fact. The sharpest.”  
  
Fact is, the Potter books were nearly the only choices Emma had for childhood reading. Twenty years ago, while rooting around a Boston salvage warehouse, she found moldering copies of paper novels tucked in mushy corrugated boxes. The covers showed kids on flying broomsticks, hurling spells, facing the bleak world in a pack, as a family. Emma stole them and hid the books inside her cot mattress at the SAC barracks. For several happy months, she slept on a hard bed and dreamed of magic.  
  
“She’s the reason I make potions,” Emma confides.  
  
Belle blinks at her. “Sorry - you do what?”  
  
Emma breaks out a winsome grin. “Slight exaggeration, okay? I make herbal remedies and stuff. It’s half-assed magic, though. Snape would have flunked me.”  
  
“Oh, surely not,” Belle laughs. “Unless he was secretly in love with your dead mother, of course.”  
  
Emma comically folds her lips to conceal a very sudden, very real frown. Her pancakes and juice arrive, along with Belle’s tea, fruit and croissant. With a shy roll of her shoulder, she issues an invitation. “I’m on my own; you mind eating with me?”  
  
Ensign French gathers her tray and waves with a flourish toward a corner table. “It would be my pleasure, marshal.”  
  
Once seated, Emma tackles her pancakes like they’re wanted felons. In between bites, she quizzes Belle French on all matters bookworm (what’s your favorite this, when did you read that), and discovers that Dr. Gold bought her the Libris as a birthday gift last year.  
  
Emma needed to know if their relationship was purely professional, friendly acquaintances, or something more intimate. The Libris price tag pretty much answers that question.  
  
Once the ice is good and broken, Emma casually baits a trap and moves the conversation along.  
  
“Say I’m trying to impress someone special,” she opens. “And I want to leave some books out, make her think I’m sophisticated and intelligent or whatever -”  
  
“Don’t be modest,” Belle interrupts. “You’re clearly very smart, marshal.”  
  
She looks up from her plate with a guarded expression. “Emma. And you only just met me, ensign.”  
  
“Belle,” the young woman says. “And I’m an exemplary judge of character. Please, go on with your question.”  
  
Emma skips right past her reflex response, to assert that an exemplary judge of character might avoid entanglement with a violent man, and instead stays on mission. For context and motivation, she reflects on the heady dreams that plagued her last night, scenarios of touch and taste so vivid that she woke and reached across the bed for a cool, bruised woman who was never really there.  
  
“So. There’s someone on my mind. I want to get to know her, but she’s from money. Refined, you know? Really clean. Even if I was in service, she wouldn’t take me seriously - unless she thinks there’s more to me than meets the eye,” Emma says.  
  
“Ah. You wish to appear a rogue of unsuspected depth,” Belle says, somehow sly and kind.  
  
“Square-up,” Emma confirms. “It’s just… I don’t want to be obvious. She’s educated and she knows what I do for a living, so any reading material would have to fit me.”  
  
Belle chews a grape and has a quick think, turning her head and scowling like a miffed puppy. Emma finds it adorable. She wonders if Gold ever loses his temper with Belle, ever touches her in anger. She doesn’t want to imagine it.  
  
“Highsmith!” Belle announces, smacking the table so hard her teacup rattles in the saucer.  
  
That kind of did it; Emma officially likes this girl. “Pardon?”  
  
“Murder, blackmail, confidence games, sexual obsession, served up with panache. It’s perfect.” Belle stands and motions for Emma to follow.  
  
Emma chugs the last of her juice, and snags the last few grapes and berries from Belle’s tray. “Where are we going?”  
  
“I have a makeshift lending library in my office,” says the helpful ensign. “Come along and I’ll introduce you to the talented Mr. Ripley.”  
  
Trailing a few steps behind, the marshal pats her jacket pockets for a quick inventory and confirms all her surveillance blips are ready for deployment. Schematics of the SQ-9 show Belle’s office, walled with transparent reinforced polyglass, is directly adjacent to that of Dr. Rupert Gold.       
  
“Sounds great. I love meeting new people,” Emma replies.  
  
  
___ __ ____ _  
  
  
  
“You’re not listening to me,” Daniel says.  
  
Regina stops pushing her breakfast eggs around on the plate and looks up. She had, in all honesty, forgotten he was still here. “What?”  
  
He leans against her kitchen counter, shirtless and sipping coffee. “Look, I’m fine with you calling me by for a visit, or whatever this morning was,” he says, waving toward Regina’s disheveled bed. “But it makes me feel cheap when you ignore me afterward.”  
  
She doesn’t engage. After a restless sleep, nettled by unwanted dreams, Regina cannot summon the energy for cutesy false intimacy. “I have a lot on my mind. Feel free to repeat your query.”  
  
Daniel straightens a little at her cold tone. “I asked how it went with the marshal last night, but never mind. I already know.”  
  
Regina steels her jaw and feels a slight pinch across her bruised cheeks, which - thanks to Emma Swan’s balm - appear only faintly mottled and barely ache. Daniel is intuitive, but he couldn’t truly know why she summoned him for a post-shift personal interlude, then made herself coffee and eggs and ignored him.  
  
“You _know_ ,” Regina says, clearly challenging him to explain.  
  
“She’s not Quorum, doesn’t respect our rules, so she made you jump hurdles to get her help,” he replies, as if the answer is obvious. “Swan rubs you the wrong way, and you hate friction.”  
  
Her hand clenches, and fork tines squeal against the plate. “On the contrary, the marshal was very accommodating,” Regina asserts. Daniel issues a humph of disbelief, which only serves to annoy her further. “And, to my recollection, you’ve made no attempt to assess my enjoyment of friction.”  
  
Daniel’s eyes widen at the rare, pointed innuendo. “Is that something you’d like to explore?”  
  
For a cruel instant, she considers confessing she spent much of last night exploring that tactile frontier in her dreams, writhing under the hands of a new lover. She considers telling Daniel that those dreams brought him here, that her body woke hungry and wet and primed for someone else, and he was the most convenient avenue to relief, if not peace of mind.     
  
She has been frank about boundaries, and maintained this personal relationship as purely a ‘colleagues with benefits’ arrangement, but Regina is not so callous as to relegate Daniel from sex partner to sounding board within the space of an hour. Besides, something in Daniel’s hopeful expression cues Regina that he would not respond with bemused detachment if she admitted fantasies of fucking their resident civilian vagabond.  
  
Regina tells herself that dreams are rarely literal and present no cause for worry. They were likely a conflation of stress and confusion, fueled by hurt over Gold’s behavior, and wonder at the marshal’s unexpected kindness… and perhaps a bit of intrigue fired by Emma Swan’s gently probing touches and flirtatious parting words. Nothing more.    
  
“This is a vessel of inquiry, commander.” Regina rises, slips her dishes into the airwash for scouring, gives him a sidelong glance. “However, all explorations will take place at _my_ instigation.”  
  
Daniel dips his chin, smiles. “Yes, captain.”  
  
Satisfied that this is a neutral place to part ways, she asks him to leave his shift report on the counter and show himself out. Regina heads for the shower, runs through a mental checklist for her morning shift, and carefully steers her thoughts away from the scheduled mid-day meeting with her ersatz spy.  
  
If past behavior is any indication, Emma Swan is halfway up to no good already.  
  
  
   
  



	5. The bugs and the thugs

 

 

  
The densely packed SQ-9 science pod contains several labs and offices, housing ship operations ranging from astrometry to sick bay. Emma’s only knowledge of these slim corridors comes from study of vessel schematics, so she sticks close to the fast-moving Ensign French as they spiral upward through what feels like a giant ant hill.  
  
Belle glances back and smiles. “Didn’t know you were in for a morning jog, eh?”  
  
Emma pats her pancake-packed belly. “Need the exercise. I ought to bother you more often.”  
  
“It’s no bother, and that’s a fine idea,” Belle suggests. “Most of the crew are standoffish with me. I know they have certain preconceptions about Dr. Gold.”  
  
“I’ve heard he can be intimidating,” Emma offers. “Gets a bit shouty.”  
  
“On occasion,” Belle mutters.  
  
Though Emma is fishing, she tries not to trouble the waters and scare Belle silent. “Sounds like a tricky pass to navigate.”  
  
“I… I suppose he can be.” Belle quiets for a few steps, and then mounts a defense as if she can’t help herself. “I mean, yes, sometimes he charges off on tangents and loses patience waiting for others to catch up, but he’s the most brilliant, passionate man I’ve ever known, so… allowances are made. He’s worth the effort.”  
  
Emma grimaces over the notion that Dr. Gold’s alleged genius excuses his severity. But when Belle slows and looks back, seemingly desperate for understanding, she shrugs and crooks up a grin.  
  
“Pobody’s nerfect,” Emma says.  
  
Belle skids to a dead halt. She glares for a moment before slipping into giggles. “That’s the worst, silliest…” she accuses, batting at Emma’s shoulder.  
  
“Sorry,” the marshal says, trying to smile back. That Belle laughs so hard at such a thin joke tells Emma her life is perhaps more grim than she’d like. There, Emma can help. “If we’re going to be friends, I should warn you: I default to silly. And bawdy.”  
  
“Good grief,” Belle moans. “What have I let myself in for?”  
  
As they resume course, a door opens just ahead and a slender blond man whips into the corridor. On sighting the man, Emma’s reply to Belle freezes in her throat. The ensign merely glances at the newcomer and offers a friendly greeting.  
  
“Morning, Dr. Whale.”  
  
He flashes a waxy smile, which melts when he sees Emma. Whale clears his throat, nods at Belle, and passes with his back tight against the wall to grant the ladies a wide berth. Several steps down, Whale angles sideways and locks eyes with Emma Swan.  
  
The marshal’s upper lip curls into a sneer. Her right hand, concealed from Belle’s sight, forms a twin-barreled gun. Emma aims at Whale and mimes firing a shot toward his fun zone. He swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple visibly bobs, then he skids off around the bend.  
  
“What was that?” Belle asks.  
  
Emma feigns blankness. “That what?”  
  
“Come on. Alan’s usually so cheerful and flirty, but he saw you and all the color drained right out of him,” Belle observes.  
  
An instinct to divert this lovely young woman from trouble impels Emma to tell the truth about her Alan Whale aversion - or at least part of the truth.  
  
“He’s embarrassed. While back, I caught him trespassing, up to some mucky business, and we had a talk. It was not friendly,” she explains, shrugging. “Anyway. Guy’s a mess from the neck up.”  
  
The ensign frowns as she digests the tacit warning. “Well, if I ever need to see him for anything medical, I’ll have a nurse present.”  
  
“Good policy,” says Emma, thinking a two-nurse buffer would be better.  
  
Belle stops at a reinforced airlock door, marked in white box type with the word ‘Research’ and Dr. Rupert Gold’s name. She leans toward the biometric scanner and stares boldly, letting the infrared camera map the unique pigmentations of her opalescent blue eyes.  
  
“Ingress approved. Welcome, Ensign French,” says the ship computer, in his/its cracked ice voice.  
  
A cheery duotone beep sounds and the door pneumatically whooshes open - a rarity on this ship, where the Quorum cut corners by installing mostly manual op hatches with tetchy lever locks and jam-prone bearing wheel pressure valves. Emma has heard bitter complaints about these design flaws from Ruby Lucas, who says fixing “tomb gates” is a waste of her engineering degree.  
  
Belle sweeps a hand across the research floor like the lady of the manor, pointing out a half dozen workstations and explaining the analysis and experiments underway at each. Emma pretends to goggle and wow as she scopes out vantage points and sound channels, determining the best spots to leave her precious baby bugs.  
  
Emma Swan, as a rule, doesn’t overpay for anything. Her mag-shank boots, ballistic camouflage leather jacket (an active environment-match garment with dormant color options of matte black, coffee brown, Prussian blue, and Carmine red - her favorite) and fitted poly-knit trousers are closeout specials from an urban survivalist outlet. Her weapons are police and military scrap, retrofitted and customized by hand. But when it was time to buy surveillance gear, she broke open the proverbial piggy bank and did not skimp.  
  
She learned fast that nothing eases a bounty hunter’s life like reliable surveillance tools. With electronic eyes and ears in the right spots, you can collect intel and plan a slick takedown with little risk of interference from civilian police scuffers. Shop your prisoner to the Quorum (or if you’re off-world, dump them at the nearest Colonial Stockade) and collect your bounty. Then prowl the headwaters for some fun and, if you’re not too bloodied or tired, someone clean to rack with.  
  
Strong tech is a major professional advantage, and Emma loves her bugs like pets. Thin as three stacked human hairs and saintly clear, the omnidirectional inch-square clingwafers greedily slurp light energy and grab even the softest auditory susurrations. If there is a weakness to her setup, it’s longevity; the bug power cells sundown at 72 hours, and the signals gradually dissolve to noise.  
  
Three days should be more than ample time to get a read on a sketchy brainiac, Emma thinks. Faking a yawn, she slaps Bug #1 over the main entrance door frame.  
  
As Ensign French guides her into the lab, she introduces Emma to one colleague she considers a friend. Specialist Ashley Perrault is busy programming nanoids to reclaim trace energy from ship waste cinders. The young blond woman smiles and greets Emma warmly but seems fatigued and eager to finish her work, so they don’t linger.  
  
Once out of earshot, Belle explains why SPC. Perrault is so harried: she’s a widowed mom of a three year-old daughter whom everyone calls ‘Pumpkin,’ though the kid’s personality belies her sweet nickname.  
  
“That child misbehaves like she’s legally contracted to be a pain in the bum,” Belle says.  
  
Though she wonders about the wisdom of raising children on a long-term space voyage, Emma says nothing. At least Ashley kept her little girl, didn’t dump naughty Pumpkin at a Sanctuary for Abandoned Children. To acknowledge and distract Belle, Emma makes sympathetic noises while she smoothes Bug #2 onto a support pillar near Ashley’s workstation - a traffic locus for the whole research floor.  
  
Bug #3 she applies to the polyglass wall shared by Belle’s homey office (comfy chairs, real wood desk and live plants) and Dr. Gold’s no-nonsense lab. The bug’s vibration sensor should gather decent audio from both sides of the wall.  
  
Through the clear partition Emma sees the man himself hard at work, eyeing monitors, fiddling with knobs and buttons and pressing a set of headphones tight to his ears. His longish hair dangles in greasy hanks across wide, unblinking eyes. Gold appears to Emma a man engrossed, quite happily lost to the world.  
  
She perches on the edge of Belle’s chaise lounge and toys with the leaves of a robustly healthy ficus tree, bathed in the warm light of a ceiling-mount UV beam. “What’s the doc up to?” Emma asks, casually jutting her chin at Gold.  
  
“Something you’d appreciate: detective work,” Belle replies. “Comms intercepted a mysterious tonal burst and Rupert - Dr. Gold - is working to interpret the origin and intent.”  
  
“Intent?” Emma sits up straight, eyes bulging. “Meaning it’s a message… from aliens?”  
  
“Technically, if they’re broadcasting from their home world, then we’re the aliens,” the ensign corrects, more sincere than pedantic. “Dr. Gold believes the signal is not random flutter or dead satellite echo, that it’s a crafted communication. If he’s right, then maybe humans are not alone in the universe after all.”  
  
“This ship could make primary contact with intelligent life,” Emma marvels.  
  
She’s annoyed for a flash that Captain Mills didn’t say anything about aliens. Of course she didn’t; that’s a hypothetical, down-the-road issue. Dr. Gold’s behavior is the immediate issue Emma has been tasked to observe and evaluate.  
  
Once Emma shakes the _‘holy shit, aliens!’_ reaction out of her head, she slumps into the chaise cushions. “That really puts my stupid dating problems in perspective.”  
  
“Nonsense. The search for love remains the greatest, most worthwhile quest anyone can undertake. Be bold, marshal. No matter how it turns out, you’ll know you had the courage to follow your heart,” says Belle.  
  
“Thanks. That’ll be a great source of comfort while the aliens are dissecting me,” says Emma.  
  
Chuckling, the ensign selects a fairly nice old-school titanium reader from a shelf packed with dozens of data pads, then loads it with books for her new friend. “If your mystery paramour fails to recognize Patricia Highsmith, come back and we’ll try something more current. Maybe some Colonial noir?”  
  
“Pass. Off-world fiction is all drunk terraformers killing their spouses and fucking sentient tractors.”  
  
Belle barks a laugh and flushes red. “Bawdy. I was warned.”  
  
Emma nods. “You’ve got an awful task trying to class me up.”  
   
“Nah, she’s all apples!” Belle chirps, adding in a confidential whisper that she can be trusted if Emma wishes to share more about the lady in question.  
  
“Not much to tell. It’s mostly hot chatter; she likes to spar. But I’ve barely even touched her,” Emma admits. “Unless dreams count, because last night… hmmm.”  
  
“Hmmm,” Belle parrots, laughing when Emma reacts with a strenuous eye roll. “I’m envious, as I had terrible dreams last night. I was drugged and shackled like some criminal lunatic. And I’ve never even seen a prison!”  
  
Lucky you, thinks Emma. The bugs are planted, and the book loan is complete, and - if she keeps her secret spying agenda a secret - she has made a new friend. She hops up and takes the pad from Belle, excusing herself and apologizing for imposing. Belle hears nothing of it and insists on walking her to the door.  
  
When it opens, Emma is confronted for the second time today with faces she’d rather not see. Two Quorum security goons, dressed all in black, loom in the doorway. They see Emma, immediately snap into asshole mode, and she braces herself for tedious verbal abuse.  
  
“Ho, then. I didn’t know they had rats up here in the smart hills,” quips Overseer Sidney Glass, the ship’s ranking security officer.  
  
His wood-brained henchman, Watchman Gaston Rose, sneers at Emma and gamely piles on. “Must do. Otherwise, why would they need a rat catcher?”  
  
Emma snickers at Rose. “Nice try, sawdust, but I think your boss was _calling_ _me_ a rat. Now, if you’ll pardon me…” She tries to edge between them, but they close ranks and block her path.  
  
“What’s this about?” Belle interjects, stepping to Emma’s side.  
  
“Propriety,” says Glass, rolling his shoulders and sniffing. “A concept this trespassing civilian trash doesn’t understand.”  
  
“You don’t understand it,” Rose adds, rearing up to his full six-five and throwing shade.  
  
Emma scowls at the ape. “At least I can spell it.”  
  
Glass snaps his fingers in her face. “I suggest you holster your attitude and scurry back below decks before I alert the captain. A few more demerits and _poof!_ You’re off this ship and limping back to the outlying colonies in your tin can shuttle.”  
  
Her fingers curl around the rigid titanium reading pad. If this escalates, Emma plans to shove the pad edge against the Overseer’s throat and hammer it through his trachea, then kick the Watchman’s knee and once he drops -  
  
“Excuse me! The marshal is here at my invitation!” Belle protests. “You’ve no call to treat her this way.”  
  
“Mind yourself, ensign.” Glass doesn’t even look at Belle; his eyes, dark and swirling with disgust, remain fixed on Emma Swan. “I will deal with disruptive elements according to Quorum codes.”  
  
The stare-down continues for only a few seconds before Glass looks away, over Emma’s shoulder, and fakes a mannered smile. Rose wilts a little, and Belle visibly relaxes. Emma guesses then that Dr. Rupert Gold has joined her going away party.  
  
“It seems to me, Sidney, that you are the disruptive element,” Gold says, with a chilling reptilian stare at the Overseer. “I asked you here for a professional consultation, not to gauge your bullyboy prowess. Please apologize to Belle’s guest.”  
  
Even though Emma is almost as shocked as Sidney Glass, she holds steady and flashes him a shitty grin. He looks like he’d rather flush himself out an airlock, but Glass grits out an “I’m sorry, marshal” like there’s sand in his throat.  
  
“There, there, there. No need for unpleasantness.” Gold sweeps an arm toward his lab and waits for the security team to walk ahead. “Gentlemen, if you would…”  
  
Rose bumps Emma’s shoulder and whispers hot in her ear. “Down the line, rat.”  
  
“Rat _catcher_ ,” Emma corrects, and enjoys the Watchman’s obvious confusion.  
  
The Overseer, displaying rare decorum, merely nods at Emma and walks away. Gold smiles at Belle, then gives Emma a careful appraisal. She can’t get a clear read on his expression; it’s a shifting whirl of suspicion, indifference, and gratitude.  
  
“Pay them no heed, Miss Swan. My lab is my castle, and if Belle wishes, you’re quite welcome to visit again,” Dr. Gold finally says, and departs with a curt half bow.  
  
Belle immediately begins apologizing, seemingly worried that the thugs scared off her new friend, but Emma reassures her that she’ll keep in touch and let her know how the Highsmith Maneuver pans out. Belle looks so humiliated and stricken that Emma breaks down and gives her a quick, awkward hug.  
  
“No worries,” Emma tells her. “She’s all apples.”  
  
Once disengaged, she rushes through the exit and yanks up her left jacket sleeve. While bolting down the steeply declined corridor, Emma tweaks her left earlobe three times, activating the bugs’ audio feed. With a few intricate taps on her forearm skin, the subcutaneous vidscreen flickers on, and she’s recording hot A/V from the research lab.  
  
Trouble is, the signal degrades with every step she takes. Gold’s lab shouldn’t have more RF shielding than the rest of the SQ-9, but something is interfering with the feed. Emma thinks she can solve it by securing a dedicated comms channel from Captain Mills.  
  
For now, Gold is meeting with Quorum security and she needs to keep recording, needs a nearby spot to duck and hunker until she can procure that bandwidth and fall back to her quarters.  
  
When she realizes she has only one option, Emma stops, winces, angrily stomps the floor grid. Then she doubles back and pounds her fist on an office door.  
  
Dr. Alan Whale opens the door holding a cheese and onion bagel. He sees Emma, drops his breakfast, and panics. He tries to shut the door, but she wedges her boot in the hatch opening and yanks him forward by his uniform front.  
  
“Let me in!” Emma growls, struggling to keep hold of the man. “You fucking owe me! Help me! Help me and we’re square.”  
  
Whale calms a bit, gauges Emma’s serious expression, and steps back. She bursts through the door, slams it, and checks her signal. The audio is good, the video passable. She puts her back against the door, slides to the floor, and picks up Whale’s dropped bagel. The doctor frowns when she takes a bite.  
  
“Ten second rule,” she mumbles through a mouthful of chewy carbs. “Fire up your comm link. I need you to make a call.”  
  
Wary but somewhat composed by now, Whale manages a sneer. “And who shall I call? Quorum security?”  
  
Emma shakes her head. “Captain Mills,” she says, and waves the dry bagel. “Got any butter?”  
  
  
   
  



	6. The convenient nosebleed and the mystery popsicles

 

 

Regina chews her bottom lip as she studies the knotted waveforms on her data pad. She’s taken over six hours of signal transmission and crunched it down to a single chart by overlapping the audio bursts in ten-minute chunks, then twenty, thirty, and so on up to hour-long sonatas of noise.

 

Yet despite her best efforts to hew order from the chaos, it's still just a barrage of dissonant tonal flotsam. Making matters worse, irritation over her lack of progress has birthed a headache. At least her cheeks don’t hurt, and the bruising is barely noticeable. Emma Swan’s homemade balm proved very effective.

 

Regina shuts her eyes and rubs the lids until bright spots jitter through the blackness. The swirling flashes pop and sputter, reminding her of fireflies dancing in the dark grove near her father’s old fishing cabin. 

 

She smiles to herself. Funny that she’s thought of Maine twice since last night, of moss and skies and balletic lights, when she hardly remembers anything concrete from that period of her life. Early childhood memories usually present as breathy, fragile sensations; cool fog Regina feels against her cheeks, saturated colors tickling her eyes, a binding warmth that must have been her daddy’s embrace… 

 

"Captain?" a pinched voice says, a mild summons designed not to startle. 

 

When she looks up, communications officer Jefferson Milliner stands before her with a bloody hand clamped across his face. Dark blotches show on the ensign’s gray uniform front. Regina leans forward in her chair. "Jeff? Are you okay?"

 

With two fingers binding his nostrils, he hesitantly lifts his hand to show her the problem. “I think my nose just exploded,” he says, making light of his injury.

 

Regina stands and looks closer. Streaks of watery red stain the young man's lips and chin, painting trails down his neck and into his collar. Her hands twitch in sympathy, but Regina does not reach out to him. “Exploded. Spontaneously?"

 

"Yes, ma'am. I was installing a new headset coupler, replacing the one that... got bent on third watch... and I guess I sprang a leak. Sorry, captain," Jefferson says, with a sheepish grin that conveys embarrassment for himself, and perhaps for his captain. He doesn't mention Dr. Gold by name, and only obliquely references the man's equipment-damaging tantrum of last night. 

 

"Permission to go clean up?" the ensign adds.

 

"Granted," Regina instantly says. "Maybe you should visit sick bay on the way."

 

"No, no, I'm fine. I've a bit of a headache, that's all." Jefferson's free hand rubs at his throat, nervously tracing a semi-circle just above his blood-soaked collar. "Didn't sleep well last night."

 

Here, Regina can empathize, having lost sleep to vivid, persistent dreams herself. She gives a brittle smile of condolence and dismisses the ensign. Tired of fighting to untangle knots of noise, she sets her data pad aside and moves to Jefferson’s station, a horseshoe console dominated by a bank of minimized holographic monitors. 

 

One display shows a scribbly graph of the incoming signal transmission, its cryptic information loop routing into an isolated drive. Another display shows ship comm traffic, with direct calls from one crewman to another. Blue lines indicate incoming calls, numerous green lines mark active calls, which then flash red upon termination. 

 

Regina selects this display with a tap and expands the size by fanning her fingers wide. She scans the calls and sees one active connection between Lt. Ruby Lucas and Lt. Killian Jones. Commiserating about their hangovers, she presumes. 

 

Dr. Rupert Gold’s comm link is now inactive, though she notes with curiosity that he placed a direct call to Overseer Sidney Glass at 06:30 this morning.

 

It’s now nearly 07:00 hours. She wonders if Emma Swan is working her assignment yet, or if she’s still curled tight in her single rack, nursing boozy nausea under that blue floral duvet. If that’s the case, Regina can’t blame her; to her recollection, the little bed looked warm and cozy. On bleak, chilly spacefaring mornings, it probably feels as magnetic as Emma’s nifty storage shelves. 

 

The captain’s shoulders draw back and she shudders, flicking away the itchy memory of a dreamed moment spent in that narrow bed: tasting her own name in a whispery kiss as the marshal’s bare thigh glides between her legs. 

 

She flushes hot, digs her nails into her palms, glances around the bridge to be sure no one notices her discomfort. She feels exposed and ridiculous, like a teenaged boy caught in public with an unwanted erection. Unjustly or no, she blames Emma Swan for inciting this libidinal unrest. 

 

Joking with Regina, teasing her in the easy manner of a confidante, if Regina had confidantes. Offering aid and kindness with no detours into invasive questions or judgments. Looking like a cross between an ancient fairytale princess and a steely Quorum Ranger from pre-war propaganda ads. Expressing sexual attraction in a cavalier yet discreet way that could be neatly ignored, if the sentiment was not returned.

 

 _Yes. How dare she?_ Regina thinks, almost laughing at her impotent criticisms. _How very dare she._  

 

Regina thinks of calling Emma’s quarters and giving her a curt, impersonal reminder that there may be malfeasance afoot, but quickly dismisses that idea. The more time she has to distance herself from unprofessional thoughts, the better. And that reminder call, she knows, is unnecessary.   

 

Despite six months of lectures and arguments and conduct demerits - mostly related to Swan’s utter rejection of Quorum documentation procedures - Regina knows the marshal isn’t one to lay about when trouble arises. The five arrested fugitives cooling their heels in Deck 4 cryogenic stasis bear out that fact.

 

Just to kill time and calm her whirring brain, Regina pulls up records pertaining to these fugitives and decides to highlight every mistake Emma Swan made filling out Apprehension Form 6871 and Resolution Form 6877. Barely into the first case summary, she forgets to nitpick and loses herself in the low joy of reading true crime.

 

Quorum Offender #THWH-9301: Woody Booth, wanted for eight counts of grand larceny, drug smuggling, and chronic non-payment of child support for six children fathered in Thailand and Macao.

 

Date 0039 − 17:40 hours: Booth apprehended at Ganymede Port while trying to score painkillers from a dealer weary of selling on credit. At 17:28 hours, said dealer pinged the Woot! Criminal Tip site, offering Booth’s location in exchange for a small cash payment. 17:31 hours: Marshal Emma Swan departs the SQ-9 and returns with fugitive Booth in custody.

 

Here, Regina recalls the sight of Emma Swan - bleeding from the nose and mouth - laboring to drag unconscious Woody Booth across the SQ-9 landing deck by his collar. This, Captain Mills wrote up as a violation of apprehension procedures, as Booth was not properly restrained and could have posed a danger to her crew.

 

“But he threw my cuffs into the shit roller!” Emma had protested, referring to Ganymede Port’s infamous giant sewage reclamation press. “Both sets!”

 

“I trust you’ll factor that lost property into your bounty claim. In the meantime, restrain that man _somehow_ or I’ll issue a negligent indifference safety demerit,” Regina replied.

 

At that point, Emma spat blood on the deck, bound Booth’s hands with a leather shoelace stripped from her boot, and dragged him away while decrying Captain Regina Mills as a ‘saurian martinet.’ 

 

Oh, how Regina had _yearned_ to write her up for insubordination. Then she stewed over the inconvenient fact that Emma wasn’t technically her subordinate. And then she puzzled for a good while over how such a ruffian loser could casually deploy ‘saurian martinet’ as a pejorative.

 

 _How very dare she_ , Regina thinks. _Shit…this isn’t working._  

 

Trying again for distraction, she scans file headers for the other four prisoners, noting (not for the first time) that two of Emma Swan’s bounties are long-term holds - meaning the marshal already had them in custody when she boarded the SQ-9. 

 

Pulling up their profiles to refresh her memory, Regina sees only two petty criminals suitable for incarceration at any Colonial Stockade. Their documented crimes are minor, their bounties must be correspondingly small, so it makes no sense for Emma Swan to bear the expense of keeping them iced, to haul them all over the quadrant like burdensome luggage.

 

The marshal must have her reasons, and Regina assumes those reasons involve money. Maybe the prisoners’ documented crimes don’t tell their full story. Regina has heard of bounty hunters faking travel data for political dissidents, smuggling them to remote hideaways, far from Quorum Tribunals and their harsh justice.

 

Regina looks closely at their holo-images, searching their blank smiles for any signs of rebel madness or elite villainy, but they just look…normal. He’s ruggedly handsome and smiles easily, though his beady eyes make him appear a bit dim. She tilts her chin up and turns her elfin head in a way that should be flattering, but only makes her appear haughty.

 

 _David Nolan. Mary Margaret Blanchard._      

 

Their names, the nomenclatural equivalent of clotted cream, make Regina’s stomach clench. She’s flicking past them to the two remaining prisoners when her comm link buzzes at her cuff. She lifts her left hand and answers the call.

 

“Captain Mills.”

 

There’s a pause and a shuffling noise, then Emma Swan’s voice whispers her name. “Regina? I need a favor.”

 

Her breath catches. She glances around, switches the call from ‘speaker’ to ‘private,’ and slips the capsule-shaped comm link off her cuff and into her ear. “Yes.”

 

“Wow. That was easy,” Emma says, her voice still low and soft. “You don’t even know what I want.”

 

“Ask,” Regina replies. She turns her chair away from the busy, oblivious bridge crew and shields her face with a hand. “If it’s within my power, I’ll probably help you.”

 

Emma snickers; it tickles like breath in her ear. “Probably?” she asks.

 

“I’m mercurial,” Regina answers. 

 

She catches herself smiling like an idiot. Hates herself for it. Does it anyway. It takes a few moments for Emma to respond, and Regina feels smug that she has perhaps thrown the marshal off her game.

 

“I need a secure channel for surveillance, direct linked between one transmission node and one receiver. How much trouble would that be?”

 

Regina cocks a brow and surveys the communications horseshoe, over which she has unfettered dominion. “A great deal of trouble,” she lies.

 

Emma clears her throat. “It’ll be worth it,” she says. “I may be onto something.”

 

“Can you elaborate?”

 

“Too soon, still a soft theory. I’ll see you once it firms up,” Emma says. “Get me the bandwidth?”

 

“Give me the node keys.”

 

With subtle motions that attract little or no attention from her crew, Regina sweeps through the security protocols and designates an encrypted channel from the SQ-9 communications spectrum for Emma’s surveillance equipment.

 

“Done,” she says. 

 

“Umm…that didn’t take long for something that was a great deal of trouble.”

 

“I’ve received numerous commendations for efficiency,” Regina casually brags. “When will I see you? For you to report, I mean.”

 

“Of course,” Emma says. “I should have something before lunchtime. Can you get away?”

 

Can she get away? From the tedium of bridge duty, the obsessing over dwindling fuel supplies, and the fruitless study of random sound waves that Regina has begun to regard as emissions from a universal fart machine?  

 

“Yes, marshal. I think I can arrange a brief absence,” she says. “Meet me in the arboretum, twelve-hundred hours.”

 

Emma hums her approval, a satisfied little noise that nests in Regina’s ear for several seconds after the call disconnects. The flashing red on the comm board catches her eye, and she sees that the marshal contacted her from the private office of Dr. Alan Whale.

 

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Regina says aloud, turning the chair in circles and wondering what constitutes appropriate fare for a spying-and-lunching rendezvous. 

 

 

 

 


	7. The wanker and the sniper

Emma crosses her feet at the ankle, slumping further against Dr. Alan Whale’s office door as she rechecks her surveillance feeds. On this dedicated comm frequency, the signal improvement is amazing, with crystalline sight and sound from all three bugs. She realizes Regina must have narrowbanded a channel from the ship’s priority spectrum.

 

 _Luxury eavesdropping,_ Emma thinks. _The lady does not muck about._

 

Not that this top-shelf accommodation surprises her. When not hamstrung by Captain Mills’ petty paper-pushing perfectionism, she finds Regina’s complete rejection of half-assery very sexy. The woman knows how to bear down and get shit done, and Emma can’t help wondering if she applies the same zeal to personal pursuits.

 

Reflecting on their brief comm link chat, she’s relieved Regina didn’t freeze her out. After last night’s sideways declaration of attraction, things could have gone either way, but the captain actually sounded pleased to hear Emma’s voice. That alone is enough to prompt a smile and a wish that it was 12:00 hours already. 

 

“Marshal?” Whale calls from the adjoining exam room, where Emma banished him during her private call. “I hear no whispered conversation; may I assume it’s safe to reenter my own office?”

 

“Safe might be pushing it,” Emma replies. “I’m still in here.”

 

Whale pauses. “Do you intend to maim me?”

 

“Bono give me patience,” Emma moans to herself. She does still want to hurt Whale, feels oddly entitled to hurt him, but doing so would mean breaking her word. People without status or resources cannot afford to devalue their promises. 

 

“Nope. I meant what I said,” she calls out. “I needed help and you helped me. Consider my plan to break your babymaker on indefinite hold.”

 

Whale cracks the door and peers at her. “No more threats? No more death glares?”

 

“No more threats,” Emma confirms. “I can’t help the death glares; that’s just what my face does when I see you now.”

 

Whale lowers his eyes and heaves a heavy sigh as he slinks into the office. “Marshal, that night on Deck 4, I truly thought I was alone.”

 

“Whether you were alone is not the issue,” Emma says. She stares at Whale and tries not to grind her teeth. “Frozen, unconscious criminals are still human beings. You can’t just… _do things_ to them.”

 

“But I never actually touched her!”

 

“You were buttering your baguette while staring at my - at my _prisoner!_ ” Emma spits. “Who knows what you’d have done if I didn’t catch you?”

 

“Nothing! I swear it!” Whale insists. “My genetic markers reveal no such proclivity. I’ve never forced… marshal, I would _never_.”

 

Emma snorts, rolls her eyes. “Stockades are full of rapists with clean DNA sheets.”

 

“Truly, though,” he says, in a softer voice. “I don’t claim a pure heart, but I am incapable of such monstrous behavior.” 

 

 _Monstrous_ , Emma silently echoes. The word is so fucking spot-on, so loaded with meaning for her. Whale couldn’t possibly understand why it makes her shiver and draw her knees to her chest.

 

The doctor regards her cautiously, as if waiting for Emma to rip into him. When she says nothing, he wrings his hands and resumes speaking his piece.  “Please understand, I’d been drinking that night. I’d just received notice of my younger brother’s death in a rebel attack. Gerry was my only family and I… and I was feeling quite alone.”

 

Instinctively, Emma wants to offer condolence, to confirm that you’re never too old to feel unmoored, orphaned. She clenches her jaw, bites down until the urge passes.

 

 “Seeking distraction, I took a walk - and yes, I know I was trespassing on Deck 4, but my judgment was impaired. And then I happened on your prisoner.”

 

“Yeah, you _happened_ all over her cryocase,” Emma mutters. 

 

Undaunted, Whale presses on with his confession. “Being near her… it soothed me. And inspired me to rather impetuous fantasy. Miss Blanchard is so very lovely, so pale and serene… she looks like a princess waiting to be awakened with a kiss.” 

 

Without conscious thought, Emma stands, knots her hands into fists. She’s two steps toward Whale before she catches herself and jerks to a halt. By rote, she runs through her checklist - mental exercises she crafted to check down the wildfire fury her SAC counselors diagnosed as a cancerous genetic inheritance. 

 

_Step one: imagine cold water dousing a fire. Hear the sizzle, smell the smoke, feel the heat dying away..._

 

_Step two: relax your hands. Stretch your fingers, long and loose. People can’t shake hands with your fist._

 

_Step three: breathe, slowly and deeply. There’s a warm hand cradling your heart, gentling it down._

 

Emma feels the anger seep out of her mind, hot and thick as poisoned blood…the cursed blood passed down from her parents. She doesn’t let it define her, trap her, warp her. And she never will.     

 

_Never will, never will, never will._

 

“Marshal?” Whale prompts. 

 

Emma sees he’s moved partly behind his desk, perhaps seeking cover. As if that would help. But she’s calm now. Nothing happened. Nothing ever will. 

 

“We signed up for a long trip on a small ship. People get sad, lonely. Managing that gets complicated,” Emma reasons aloud, speaking to Whale but staring right through him. “And I know the Blanchard woman _looks_ like a good person. Sometimes I catch myself wanting to talk to her.” 

 

Here, she feels her throat go thick and tight. She swallows dry, shakes her head. 

 

“But there are rules for how we treat human beings,” says Emma. “What you did was a goddamn violation. You know better; act better.”

 

 Whale apologizes again, swears he’ll stay away from Deck 4, sorries and swears until Emma just blocks him out. She shucks up her jacket sleeve and taps the forearm skin over her vid implant, bringing Gold’s lab feed to the fore. With a twist of her earlobe, she raises the volume on the 2mm audio receiver tacked inside her Eustachian tube. The signal remains clear and true, her recording uninterrupted.

 

“Good heavens! What butcher gave you that implant?” Whale gestures to the three-inch long by quarter-inch wide stripe of scar tissue where Emma’s augmentation technician (a nameless headwater black marketeer) installed the flexicon screen. “I can fix your arm, if you like. Graft a bit of synthaderm, make it smooth as a baby’s bum,” says Whale. “Gratis, of course, for your understanding.”

 

Splitting her attention, Emma halfway listens to Dr. Gold’s conversation with Sidney Glass while replying to Whale’s offer. 

 

“No, thanks.” Emma surveys the Quorum physician’s handsome, unlined face, pristine and blank as an eggshell. “When life leaves a mark on me, I keep it.”

 

“Huh. Well, then. If you require nothing further of me…” Whale nervily juts his chin at the exit. 

 

In no hurry to ease the doctor’s discomfort, Emma merely raises a finger and shushes him. She listens closer to Gold as he preaches to the Overseer, watches him stomp around his lab and sermonize about their captain’s grave error in judgment and the implications thereof. 

 

Certain phrases catch her attention, gems like “flaccid leadership” and “indifference to mission parameters” and “criminal intellectual inertia.”

 

Emma isn’t totally certain what Gold meant by that last one, but she has a solid line on the gist: Captain Regina Mills shouldn’t be in charge of a scientific exploratory mission because she’s a lazy, stubborn dummy. To those assertions, Emma can imagine only one response.

 

“Bullshit,” she says, and yanks open the office door.

 

Standing in the corridor with a finger poised over the doorbell is Rory Phillips, the civilian wife of SQ-9’s only decent security officer. With bloodshot eyes and notable pallor, she looks frazzled to the bone and seems quite shocked to see Emma Swan.

 

“Hiya,” Emma peeps, and skirts past her into the hall.

 

“Uh…hello.” Rory glances back at Emma, then calls to Dr. Whale. “Alan? Can you help me? I’m having sleep troubles.”

 

“Certainly, Aurora. Do you need something to help you drift off?”

 

“No, please! I’ve had the most terrible dreams!” Rory practically shouts. “I want something to help me _stay awake_.”    

 

The office door closes. Emma stands there a moment, tapping her foot on the steel floor grid, seeking the correct mental shelf to store this new information.

 

 _Belle and Rory had nightmares. I had a scorching sex dream about an unattainable power figure,_ Emma thinks. _Sounds like I got the better end, for once._

 

 

 

__—   _— ____

 

 

 

At 11:50 hours, Regina arrives at the arboretum toting a nondescript messenger satchel. She considered requisitioning a picnic basket from the PX, but squashed that idea once she realized the wicker and gingham carrier all but screamed _romantic lunch date_.

 

Regina Mills doesn’t _do_ romantic lunch dates. This is a working meeting.

 

 _Perhaps we’ll eat as we talk, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter,_ she tells herself.

 

Though it is not her habit, she takes the slow, winding route through the arboretum farming sector. For some reason, she wants to feel the spongy grass path beneath her feet. Part of her mind mocks this as foolish, tells her it isn’t even real grass - just an engineered carbon-oxy exchange pad that helps scrub and recycle the ship’s air supply.

 

 _But it feels good. It’s soft and forgiving as sod, pretty as red fescue,_ she tells herself. _Don’t focus on the origin. That doesn’t matter._

 

It’s quiet in here today. She hears only the hiss of the mist pipes, the electric hum of the UV bars almost twenty feet overhead. Normally, she can’t get three steps in the door before the ship agronomist jogs up and insists on showing her some budding baby that will prove beautiful, or savory, or otherwise make life worth living, provided you have eyes and taste buds.

 

Relishing the privacy, Regina takes her time, tooling past hydroponic planters brimming with green peas and purple berries, past dwarf trees laden with bright lemons and sunny fingers of bananas. Near the furthest corner, away from curious eyes and eavesdroppers, she unpacks the satchel beneath an apple tree heavy with glossy red fruit. On the grass, she spreads a soft gray blanket and lays out two commissary lunches: quinoa and kale salad with pistachios and cherries, orange-ginger lemonade, and flaky tartlets filled with sweet cheese or custard; she can’t tell which.

 

Curious - and wary of culinary surprises - Regina dips her pinkie tip into a tartlet and tastes mascarpone, coffee, and cinnamon. She’s humming in approval and sucking her finger clean when she catches sight of Emma Swan, watching her from behind the apple tree. Regina freezes for a second, then spits out her finger and wipes it with a cloth napkin. 

 

“Easy. I don’t judge,” the marshal says, leaning against the trunk and grinning. “I myself performed profane acts on a stack of pancakes just this morning.”

 

“I couldn’t identify the filling and feared it might be something horrid,” Regina explains, and feels stupid for even bothering. “The cooks experiment when they’re bored.”

 

“Some people call that innovation,” Emma teases as she rounds the tree and plops down opposite the captain. She eyes the modest lunch spread, looks up at Regina, and her grin warms to a toothy smile. “Everything looks really fantastic. Thank you.”

 

Faced with that ingratiating smile, and the marshal’s plainspoken gratitude, Regina defaults to etiquette baselines. She says _you’re welcome_ and _after you_ and _I hope it’s to your liking,_ even though it’s killing her to hear about Rupert Gold and Sidney Glass and exactly how Emma managed to finagle surveillance on the very private scientist. 

 

Fortunately, Emma Swan eats faster than any human she’s ever seen. The woman vacuums up her entree, guzzles her beverage and scarfs down her tartlet all in the time it takes Regina to make a dent in the salad. Once finished, Emma wipes her mouth, thanks Regina for the meal, neatly tucks her biodegradable garbage into a nearby compost bin, and settles in to give Captain Mills all the scuttlebutt. Her first line, however, detonates with all the subtlety of a pipe bomb.

 

“So, anyway…Dr. Gold asked your security chief to relieve you of command and place you under arrest.”

 

Regina drops her fork. For several numb seconds, her quinoa-filled mouth hangs open, until she forcibly reminds herself how to chew and swallow, how to breathe and make words. Loud words. “He did _what_?”

 

“Exactly. Okay, so here’s a very long conversation condensed to summary statements: Gold told Glass that you’re too scared to follow the Quorum mission directive of investigation and discovery, that your disagreement over the alien signal is rooted in a long-standing conflict over your poor command tactics and slovenly thinking,” Emma restates. “And thanks for the heads up about fucking _aliens_ , by the way. I nearly swallowed my brain when Belle said that word.”

 

“There are no aliens, Miss Swan!” Regina snaps. “Aside from being mutinous, Gold is delusional. Commander Hayes and I suspect he’s experiencing a delayed mental breakdown over the loss of his son.”

 

Emma blinks and draws back. “Wait - his kid died?”

 

“Not a kid, and perhaps not dead. Neal Gold was thirty when his ship vanished in this quadrant. That’s why Rupert left a tenured position at the academy and signed onto this particular mission, and I believe that’s why he’s so desperate to investigate that nonsensical transmission. He hopes a random smattering of noise will lead him to answers about Neal.”

 

“It’s no excuse for mutiny, but…it’s his son,” Emma says, looking too sympathetic for Regina’s liking. “You’ll check the signal source eventually, just in case he’s right?”

 

“I told Dr. Gold we would investigate immediately following our mining stop at the Heigen Belt. For a sane man, that offer would suffice,” Regina replies. “It’s been two years since Neal disappeared, and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I know that either way, a few more weeks won’t make a difference.”

 

Emma squints funnily, sucks her bottom lip like there’s a thought trapped inside. Regina thinks it’s probably a hunk of kale, since Emma barely chewed her food at all.

 

“What kind of ship was Neal on?” Emma asks. “Was it a freighter?”

 

Regina takes a moment to pull up the memory. “Yes. He was transporting terraforming equipment to the new Kelbourne colony.”

 

“Heavy machinery. Means the ship was a Class-5 or better. Those life support pods are only rated for twelve months, but you can stretch that by going hard freeze. You get even more time if you daisy chain your power supplies and cut all auxiliary drains,” Emma says. 

 

Regina gapes at her, frowns at her, and eventually asks the marshal how she came by such knowledge.

 

“I travel with frozen criminals, and not every ship I board has your power supply - or your adherence to human rights. Sometimes I have to beg, borrow, or steal the juice to keep my bounties alive,” Emma explains with a shrug. “Just thinking that if I got in trouble out here, I’d set my pod for a deep freeze and cut every drain except the emergency beacon, but even that signal’s gonna sundown and gradually fail to noise.”

 

“Noise,” Regina repeats. “But static, yes? Routine transponder pings would degrade to predictable static?”

 

“I would assume so, unless his beacon ID coder took damage. If the beacon forgets that it’s a beacon, it might broadcast all kinds of crazy shit.”

 

“Nobody ever suggested… I didn’t know… dammit.” Regina regards her lunch, feels nauseous, and folds the lot into the garbage. She sits back on the blanket, stretches her legs, and slowly melts down to a supine slump. Emma says nothing for a while, just lets her lie there and stew until she finally summons the energy to speak again. “Marshal, you were less trouble as a disobedient idiot.”

 

Emma laughs lightly. “Don’t fret; I’m still an idiot. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

 

“Once a day,” Regina corrects. “We’re on 24-hour military time.” 

 

“Ah. See? Still pretty dumb.” Emma hoists herself up and scoots closer, so near her hip brushes against Regina’s thigh. She leans in, green eyes shining in the false sunlight, and whispers, “What now, cap?”

 

She’s quiet for several heartbeats, a few ticks of the clock, though it seems much longer. Regina feels the cushioning grass, the woven blanket, the warm light. Smells the ripe fruit hanging overhead, the leather of Emma’s blue jacket, the ginger and orange on her breath. There’s a loose blond curl dangling along Emma’s cheek; Regina wants very badly to reach up and tuck it behind her ear.

 

“I’m sorting through a torrent of genius ideas,” Regina says, aiming for sarcasm and falling just short. “Distract me. Tell me how you got into Gold’s lab.”

 

Emma sighs, regards Regina through slow, dreamy blinks. “I asked Belle for some books,” she says. “Told her I wanted to impress someone smart… and hot… and kind of mean.”

 

At this, Regina cannot stop herself from smiling. “And what did she recommend?”

 

“Patricia Highsmith.”

 

“Classy crime novels. Good choice,” Regina says. “Will you read them?”

 

“I did. Six years ago.” Emma tucks the stray curl behind her ear. “Are you impressed?”

 

“Mmm. Well done.”

 

“Thank you.” 

 

She wants to stretch this moment out like taffy, to wring a thousand seconds from a minute. It’s unfair that such a thing is impossible, that she lacks the science or magic to make it so.

 

She wants to keep her ship orderly and safe, and - if such a thing is possible - she wants to save Gold’s son. It’s unfair that those two goals are so opposite and yet so linked.

 

Mostly, right now, she just wants Emma Swan to kiss her. Softly, on the mouth, until her mind goes featherlight and her body burns away.

 

It’s unfair that just then - as the marshal gazes into her eyes and leans in, as Regina feels a loose lock of Emma’s golden hair dust across her cheek - the attack begins.

 

She hears one sharp, thunking impact. Emma tenses and cries out in surprise. Lying beside them on the blanket is the surprise projectile: an apple, heavy and deeply bruised. 

 

“The hell?” Emma says, and looks up just as another apple, flung from the tree boughs above, strikes her squarely between the shoulders. 

 

The marshal gets low and stretches out her jacket like batwings, gallantly shielding the captain as more apples pelt down from above. Regina hears Emma grunt as the fruit thumps heavily against her back, but she doesn’t look angry. Under the tent of her jacket, with her face so close to Regina’s, she is unmistakably smiling and laughing, even as she winces with each thudding blow. Regina gives her a baffled, questioning look, and Emma just shakes her head.

 

“It’s a kid up there,” she says. “Little red-haired girl - OUCH! FUCK! - and I think I know her name.”

 

“PUMPKIN!” a man shouts. “STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! Get DOWN from there!”

 

The apple assault ends abruptly. Emma holds fast, hovering just above Regina on her elbows and knees. She’s still grinning stupidly, as if she’s not hurting, as if the pain doesn’t matter.

 

Regina kisses her then, on the cheek, because the moment is getting away from her and she has to do something.

 

Slowly, Emma blinks at her. She nods, confirming that this will be continued later, when they’re not being pranked by a wicked, bratty monkey. They part and stand, and Regina sees their savior is none other than the missing agronomist, SPC. Anton Le Goumes.

 

“Captain Mills, I’m so sorry,” Anton says, bowing slightly at the waist to hug at the little girl’s shoulders. “I’m babysitting today for Ashley Perrault, and I thought lil’ Pumpkin here was still in the seedling pen. She moves fast, don’t you sweet pea?”

 

Pumpkin Perrault, the apple-flinging ginger dervish, says nothing. She grins at Emma and Regina, flashing a mouth full of crooked baby teeth, and darts away like smoke. Anton says a quick goodbye and lumbers away in pursuit.

 

“Pumpkin,” Regina says, and shudders at the mere sound of the name.

 

Emma snickers, plainly charmed by the devil child. “Kids. You gotta love ‘em.”

 

Regina knits her brows, gives a dubious frown as she folds the gray blanket into her satchel.

 

“What? You don’t like kids?” Emma asks.

 

“I think I might like _my child_ ,” Regina answers. “However, I believe that arbitrary love for every mean-spirited miniature human in existence should not be compulsory.”

 

Emma gives her a wry smile. She picks up a bruised apple, shines it on her white cotton shirt, and takes a bite. “Yeah,” she mumbles. “Your kid wouldn’t act like that.”

 

“No, he wouldn’t,” Regina replies. She moves onto the grass path and Emma falls into step beside her.

 

“He? Definitely a boy?” the marshal inquires.

 

Regina nods. “I even have a name in mind.”

 

“Not Pumpkin?”

 

“No.”

 

“Something similar, since you obviously love her so much. How about Gordon. Get it? Like _gourd-on_.”

 

“Marshal.”

 

“Oh, that’s a _good_ name.”

 

“You’re unraveling an afternoon of progress,” Regina warns. “Please be quiet. I have a lot to think about.”

 

Emma sways sideways and accidentally-on-purpose bumps her shoulder. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

  

 

 


	8. The gambit and the promise

Emma Swan can’t stop smiling.

 

She’s wrestling an unwieldy magnetic levitation dolly to shift heavy cargo from the loading dock onto Corsair-2, a Quorum shuttlecraft boasting killer thrusters and dizzying tech. Any other day, this mundane activity would put her on edge; she’d scrunch her forehead and frown, worry about damaging the shuttle or the pricey dolly, and silently curse herself for every bump and knock. The Quorum would doubtless deduct any necessary repair costs from her contract payout, and she can’t afford to burn a few thousand credits for a stupid mistake.

 

Right now, though? Lost credits and dented mag-floats and Quorum document drones are the last things on her mind. 

 

_Well…_

 

Strike and amend. Emma _is_ thinking about one particular Quorum bureaucrat, but those thoughts don’t involve pushing paper. In her mind, Emma wanders through scenarios of apple tree picnics and whispered confidences, of jellyroll heroism and warm lips brushing her cheek. Almost five hours later, she’s still lingering over lunch with Regina Mills. 

 

“Could you smile more quietly, please?” Ruby says, suddenly at her side. 

 

Startled, Emma squeezes the steering handle too hard and the dolly lists to port. She digs in with a little muscle and gets it under control just before her precious cargo smacks into the loading ramp. Ruby giggles at her. Emma switches off the mag-floats and the dolly settles to the deck with a whir and a steely thump. Scowling, she deals a two-knuckled punch to Ruby’s upper arm.

 

“ _Owwww_ ,” Ruby whimpers, rubbing her arm. “Don’t hit; my stomach may retaliate all on its own.”

 

Emma looks at her friend and sees more than the expected signs of a hangover. Ruby appears every bit as pale and frazzled as Rory Phillips, perhaps even more so. “We only had ale and spice. That’s usually a safe combo for you.”

 

“Too safe. I should have drank ’til I dropped,” Ruby mutters. “Passing out leaves you with _some_ dignity.” She stares across the dock at a busy cluster of people. They wear light gray banded with a green sash, marking them as Ruby’s fellow engineers. When one of them meets her eyes and waves a hand in greeting, Ruby spins back toward Emma, looking nauseous. 

 

“Hey,” Emma says, rubbing gently at Ruby’s smacked shoulder. “Talk, you.”

 

Ruby tries to smile, but gives up quickly. She motions for Emma to follow her into the shuttle and they sit atop the loading ramp, mostly hidden from view. “Last night, I did something really stupid… and really weird,” says Ruby.

 

“Killian?” Emma teasingly suggests. She means it as a harmless joke, though Ruby’s flinch reveals the truth. “Oh, shit! You finally made a move on him?”

 

“It’s not… I wasn’t trying to…” Ruby protests, then just sighs and pauses to regroup. “When we left your place, he was really weaving. I walked him back to his quarters and tried to get him settled in for the night. But he was lonely… and homesick…and talking about his dead fiancee.”

 

“Warning signs,” says Emma. “Bunch of flashing red lights.”

 

“A passel of blinkers, yeah, and I should have known better,” Ruby says. “Anyway. We sat on the floor and had coffee and talked, and it was really nice… until he started crying. He _sniffled_ , Em, like a lost little boy. So I hugged him and let him cry, and I remember thinking that his hair smells nice and his beard is really a lot softer than it looks, and then I sort of…kissed him?”

 

“You sort of kissed a drunk, grieving man.” Emma knits her brows and shakes her head. Killian is a raw burn when he ponders his lost love, but she knows that Ruby - despite her months-long crush - didn’t mean to take advantage. “That might have been ever so slightly predatory.”

 

“Maybe so, but you haven’t heard the worst of it.” Ruby covers her face with both hands, muffling her voice to a shamed whisper. “One thing led to other things and we… did stuff. And it was good, I think. Nobody cried.”

 

“Normally a positive sign,” Emma says, gently prompting her friend to continue.

 

“Okay, so, after we… then I fell asleep for a few hours. I remember having this really strange dream, and I woke up to the sound of Killian screaming.”

 

“What? He couldn’t wait for you to wake up?”

 

“Emma, he was screaming because…” Ruby lowers her hands and stares at her boots. “Because I was _biting_ him. My teeth were, like, buried in his hand.”

 

_Huh. Okay, then._ In mild shock, Emma is momentarily at a loss. She unconsciously taps a fingernail against her front teeth. “Was it skin or mech?”

 

“Mech, thankfully. But I damaged a nerve receptor node and his glove is a mess,” says Ruby. “I really latched onto him, tore the synthaderm all to hell.”

 

There’s a nagging voice inside Emma’s head, a sing-song trill repeating words she will not say aloud: _What big teeth you have got! All the better to eat you up with…_

 

Instead, she asks if Ruby has spoken to Killian since it happened.

 

“He called early. Asked if I was okay, joked around a little.” Ruby looks up and smiles weakly. “He apologized for wearing plum sauce cologne. Said he knows the smell drives me crazy with hunger.”

 

Emma snickers and pats her friend’s thigh. “That’s that, red. Killian knows you didn’t mean to hurt him. If he’s not holding a grudge, you gotta let yourself off the hook.”

 

“But that was our first time!” Ruby argues. “I wanted it to be special… with less crying… and no terrified yelling.”

 

“Or grievous bodily harm.”

 

Ruby taps the point of her nose, denoting that Emma hit the bullseye. “I’m blaming that weird nightmare,” she says. “One minute, I’m charging through the woods like a crazy dog or wolf or something. I’m hunting a deer and right when I’m about to take it down, I wake up giving the worst oral ever. Totally not my fault….right?”

 

“Sounds like a plausible defense,” Emma replies, nodding. “But you’re not crashing at my place anymore unless you wear a mouth guard.”

 

Ruby laughs, agreeing that might be safer for all concerned. She sits up straighter, takes a deep breath, and visibly relaxes, which puts Emma back at ease. Mostly. 

 

_Belle. Rory. Ruby._ The list of crewmen plagued by bad dreams keeps getting longer. While Belle simply seemed irritated by her dreams, Rory Phillips was disturbed enough to seek medical help. In Ruby’s case, the dream carried over to waking life and caused real damage. Emma decides to mention this trend to Captain Mills when next they speak, which could be fairly soon, if all goes well. Regina might even want to meet up tonight…

 

“Smiley Swan. You’re so obvious,” Ruby says, leaning in to taunt her friend with a playful whisper. “Your face might as well be a vid screen.” 

 

Emma crimps her smile - which she hadn’t intentionally summoned - into a warped frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“Yes, you do,” Ruby insists. “All these months of intentionally fucking up your bounty paperwork, all the dumb disciplinary infractions, it was all to get Regina Mills’ attention. And now you’re down here busting knuckles with me, retrofitting a Corsair on super-secret orders from the captain. From _persona non grata_ to go-to girl? Much respect, Em.”

 

There’s not much she can say to that, so Emma just sighs and rubs at her blushing cheeks. “You’re very observant,” she tells Ruby. “You should have been a Watchman.”

 

“No need to insult me. But I am going to need some details…”

 

“Oh, Ruby, gross. No. No way.”

 

“I don’t mean _details_ , you freak. I just worry that you’re wasting your precious time on a career soldier who probably has the Quorum manifesto inked across her ass,” Ruby says. “So give me something to ease my mind.”

 

Emma sits quiet, taking stock of her life in a few brief moments. She finally has a job that might yield enough credits to get her off the bounty trail and let her make a real home. She has the attention and trust and - perhaps - the affection of a formidable, beautiful woman. She has friends who think of her, care for her, even when she’s not buying drinks. While many civilians distrust the Quorum and resent its omnipresent authority, Emma has to admit that her fortunes are trending steadily upward on the SQ-9. 

 

“She brought me lunch today,” Emma hurriedly whispers. “We ate under an apple tree. She kissed me on the cheek.”

 

Ruby’s mouth drops open. Emma honestly cannot help glancing at her pearly teeth and assessing them as snapping, ripping weapons. 

 

“The captain kissed you,” Ruby restates, with no small measure of disbelief. “On the cheek, like in one of your silly old books about knights and castles.”

 

“Books aren’t silly; reading is the only reason I’m not staggeringly stupid,” Emma says. “But yes, she did. And yes, it was really, really nice. And if you make fun of me for it - or breathe a word about this to anyone - I’ll unleash a fusillade of tasteless cannibalism jokes every time we meet, from now until for-fucking-ever.”

 

Ruby snorts a tiny laugh. “ _Tasteless_ cannibalism?”

 

Emma blinks at her. “Dual meaning, because you got a mouth full of synthaderm…which has no blood, no sweat -”

 

“No taste, right.” Ruby shakes her head. “Too quick by half, Smiley Swan.”

 

“Books, bitch,” Emma says. “Only legal way for a poor civvie to rise above her station.”

 

“I still don’t get why you never joined the service,” Ruby says. “I bet you’d have ranked Major by thirty.”

 

Emma groans and scrambles to her feet, offers Ruby a hand up. “It wasn’t an option for me,” she truthfully admits. “Come on, Lazy Lucas. Let’s get this done.”

 

Together, they restart the mag-lev engine and float the heavily laden dolly up the Corsair loading ramp. There’s a fair amount of greasy, sweaty toil ahead, but neither woman seems to dread the prospect. Hard work can be rather pleasant when a friend shares the load.

 

That said, Ruby does howl in protest when Emma starts whistling.  

 

 

 

 

—^-___—

 

 

 

 

 

At 16:58 hours, Captain Regina Mills summons Overseer Sidney Glass to the command camera, a small conference room adjacent to the bridge.

 

At 17:00, Sidney arrives, salutes, and is promptly enveloped in cold, isolating silence. He stands rigidly, hands clasped at the small of his back. 

 

Regina carefully surveys a holographic array of star charts and signal graphs hovering above the oval planning table. Behind Captain Mills, to her left, stands Commander Daniel Hayes; to the right, Lt. Killian Jones. Both men are stock-still. Regina hears a faint rustling, knows that her Overseer is fidgeting, and she nearly smiles in anticipation.

 

She calls back over her shoulder to her navigation officer. “Lieutenant Jones, report.”

 

“Signal triangulation checks out clean, captain. Sergeant Lance confirms all charts are loaded into the shuttle.”

 

Sidney suddenly perks up. Again, Regina uses real effort to maintain ‘command face’ and presses ahead. “The equipment manifest is complete?”

 

“Pending your approval, captain,” Daniel responds. “Lieutenant Lucas confirms successful retrofit and installation of all components.”

 

Regina finally acknowledges her Overseer by looking him up and down. Her eyes linger around his waistline, and she asks a rather embarrassing question. 

 

“Your file shows an embarkation weight of one-hundred and eighty-five pounds; what is your _current_ weight, Sidney?”

 

Sidney clears his throat and surreptitiously sucks in his little pot belly. “Captain, may I ask the relevance -”

 

“That will soon become clear,” Regina interrupts. “Weight?”

 

He hesitates, then throws back his shoulders and defiantly lifts his chin. “About 1-9-5, I suspect.”

 

“You suspect 1-9-5, but we need a clearly defined figure, so to speak,” Regina says. “When you leave here, visit medical for an exact current weight. Get a mission fitness check while you’re there.”

 

His eyes widen. “A _mission_ , captain?”

 

Regina braces her hands on the table. She leans forward into the holographic star chart, letting points of light gleam and pulse in her eyes while she speaks to Sidney in a voice  grim as gravity.

 

“A mission I will only entrust to my most elite security officer. Sidney, as explained in your morning brief, the SQ-9 comm array intercepted an unidentified signal. Dr. Gold argued vehemently in favor of immediate investigation, yet I refused to alter course away from the Heigen Belt, as our fuel supply must be replenished. As you well know, Quorum procedure dictates that a captain must place the soundness of ship and crew above all tertiary objectives.”

 

She pauses, waits until Sidney verbally acknowledges this command keystone with a soft, “Yes, captain.” 

 

“I have no intention of changing my mind. Protocol is on my side, and my command staff back my decision,” Regina adds, “but I cannot ignore what this signal might represent. Though I strongly suspect it’s no more than random noise, it _could_ be a communication from intelligent life, or possibly a malfunctioning distress beacon - which means human life could be at stake. Therefore, we will investigate. More specifically, _you_ will investigate.”

 

Sidney’s already wide eyes threaten to bulge clean out of his skull. “Me?”

 

“You, Dr. Gold, a pilot and a med tech will take the Corsair-2 and follow Lieutenant Jones’ triangulated course toward the signal’s origination point. You will determine the nature of this communication. If you find a ship in need, you will effect a rescue operation. If it turns out to be an alien greeting or summons, you’ll have the honor of making primary contact with intelligent life. As ranking officer on the mission, you would serve as ambassador for the entire human race.”

 

At this, Sidney Glass seems to calm. His eyes glisten, and his face becomes the very picture of pride. “Captain…”   

 

Regina slowly - rather dramatically - straightens while maintaining steady eye contact. “Dr. Gold is a valuable Quorum asset, but he is a volatile man and barely a year from being a civilian. You and I, Sidney, are career soldiers and officers. I need to know that in my absence, Rupert Gold will be protected - and managed - in the best interests of the Quorum.”

 

“For that, you can rely on me,” says Glass. “Thank you, captain, for entrusting me with this responsibility.”

 

Regina cocks one slim brow. “You’re really the only person I considered,” she admits. “Before you check in with Doctor Whale, would you stop by Gold’s lab and inform him of this development?”

 

Sidney blanches ever so slightly. “You want _me_ to tell him?” 

 

“The professor needs to get used to taking orders from you, Overseer,” Regina says. “Best to establish that relationship as soon as possible.”

 

He nods and practically clicks his teeth in anticipation. “When do we leave?” 

 

“I assume Dr. Gold will require some preparation time. We’ll set a tentative departure target for tomorrow morning at oh-nine-hundred hours.”

 

“Yes, captain. I will inform _the professor_ thusly.”

 

“Dismissed,” she says. And when Glass is almost out the door… “Sidney?”

 

He turns eagerly, like a feral dog craving another scrap of meat. 

 

Regina gives him a cool, toothy smile. “Congratulations.”

 

Sidney grins so darkly, Regina could swear there’s already blood in his mouth. “Thank you, Captain Mills.”

 

The door closes. As her gambit to defuse Gold’s mutiny meets its first success, she feels a bit of weight fall from her shoulders. Regina waits a few seconds, then heaves a sigh of relief and collapses into the nearest chair. Behind her, Killian Jones chuckles and Daniel Hayes offers a small clap of applause. Jones joins in, and Regina notices a bandage wrapped around his mechanical hand. He notes her attention and swiftly lowers his injured hand to his side. 

 

“I’ve never seen someone so happy to get played. Masterfully done, captain,” says Daniel. “Even though he’s getting what he wants, I almost feel sorry for Gold.”

 

“I feel sorry for the poor pilot and med tech who’ll be stuck between the doctor and the Overseer,” Killian adds. “If I may be excused, captain, I have an appointment.”

 

“Dismissed. Thank you for the swift work on those triangulation charts, lieutenant.” Almost as an afterthought, Regina nods toward his injured hand. “Take care.”

 

Jones blinks rapidly, gives her a crooked smile. “Will do. Happy to help, ma’am.” Killian bids the captain and commander farewell with a chipper salute, and takes his leave.

 

Daniel deactivates the holograms and sits on the edge of the table, rather too close to Regina. “Feel like having a victory celebration?”

 

She eases her chair away from the table and stands up, smoothes down her jacket front. “It’s far too early to declare victory. Gold is a stubborn man; this mission may not be enough to placate him. If he sees it as a half-measure, it may simply inflame his temper and inspire him to further irrational behavior.”

 

“A small win is still a win,” Daniel says, lowering his chin and cutting his eyes upward - a gesture Regina sometimes finds quite enticing. “Dinner and a drink?”

 

Again, Regina has the strange urge to confess that someone else has her attention, that she would rather share any celebratory moments with the person who helped her plan this diversionary mission. She can’t bring herself to tell Daniel the whole truth, but she can’t rationalize lying to him, either.

 

“I have prior plans,” Regina says, “with the marshal.”

 

Daniel merely nods. “Ah, well. Sorry about that. Maybe after you’re done dealing with her…”

 

“I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She walks around the table and opens the door. “You should prepare for your shift.”

 

He lingers on the table, puzzling Regina. Daniel has been summarily dismissed so often, he should be used to it by now. But there he sits, staring at Regina with soft, kindly eyes.

 

“Do you… _feel_ … for me?” he asks.

 

Regina freezes, braces herself, and lets a rush of honesty well from her mouth. “Somewhat,” she quietly admits. “Though not as much as you deserve. Perhaps we should resume a strictly professional relationship from this point forward.”

 

Daniel turns his eyes away, touches a hand to his chest and takes an unsteady breath. “Perhaps that would be best.”

 

They fall into a bottomless silence. Daniel keeps his jaw tight, swipes fingers under his damp eyes. Regina wonders if this is how it feels to break up with someone. If so, it’s kind of awful. She feels like she should apologize, but for what? She never made him any promises, never encouraged any notions of commitment or deep emotional ties. His hopes for their relationship clearly differed from hers, and that made them fundamentally incompatible as long-term lovers. Regina tells herself that Daniel’s misconceptions are not her fault.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says anyway. Even without hurtful intentions, she has achieved a hurtful result. “I’m sorry.”

 

She doesn’t wait for a reply, just pushes through the door and walks. She’s staring ahead somewhat blindly, but that doesn’t matter since her feet seem to know where she’s going. Her boots rap a steady rhythm against the steel decking grates, set her on a winding path toward the lift. She boards, instructs the computer to take her to Deck 4, and waits impatiently for the doors to open. Stepping fast again, she counts ten and finds herself at the marshal’s door.

 

Regina presses her thumb to the bell. After three chimes (exactly two seconds in duration, spaced at five second intervals), the door cracks open and the marshal peeks through, showing one green eye and a hesitant smile.

 

“So…” Emma begins.

 

“It worked,” Regina tells her. “The first stage, in any case. Sidney just left to inform Gold.”

 

Emma’s smile firms up and she chirps a tiny, joyful giggle. “Snap-bang!” she says. “Wanna come in and watch your mutiny shrivel up and die?”

 

Regina doesn’t even have to say anything, because Emma has already stepped away and left the door open. The captain enters the marshal’s quarters without checking the hallway for observers, because she just doesn’t give a damn.

 

“I’ll set up a projector on the kitchen table,” Emma calls from her bedroom. “There’s some fresh juice in the cooler, or wine, if you want it. Help yourself.”

 

That drink she denied Daniel suddenly sounds absolutely necessary, so Regina proceeds to the kitchen with a welling thirst for something potent. 

 

She passes Emma’s cracked bedroom doorway and catches a glimpse of the marshal pulling her tattered red sweater over a black tank top. Her legs are bare, and Regina notes again the length, the lean muscle, and wonders about the smattering of scars… 

 

“Sorry so slow,” Emma calls. Her back remains to the door. “Ruby made me do all the grimy work, so I had to catch a shower.”

 

As Emma leans over the single bed to retrieve her stretchy black pants, her sweater rides up and reveals twin creases where thighs meet bottom. Regina feels a strange itching across her palms. Her mouth floods with moisture, and she swallows noisily. 

 

Emma freezes. Looks back over her shoulder and catches Regina’s eye. Smiles, and makes a promise. “Won’t be long, now.”

 

Despite the fiery blush burning her skin from ears to feet, Regina manages to smile in return. “No rush.”

 

She finds the bottle of white in the cooler, twists out the vacuum seal and pours two glasses. Takes a seat at the kitchen table and waits quietly as Emma Swan emerges, shoeless but dressed, and sets a mini holo projector in the table center. She shucks up her sweater sleeve and fiddles with a subdural vidscreen implant - an unusual choice for personal tech augmentation, but one Regina chalks up to the marshal’s unusual profession. The ropy scar above the implant, she chalks up to inadequate medical care. She wonders if Emma would allow Dr. Whale to repair the implant site…

 

“My uplink isn’t working,” Emma says. 

 

Regina feels a moment of panic. “Does that mean your surveillance is down?”

 

“No, the feed is strong, but this awesome clear channel you assigned is encrypted, so the projector won’t pair with my implant,” Emma explains. She raises her forearm, displaying a small screen with the feed from Gold’s lab. “You mind watching on this?”

 

“I don’t mind at all,” Regina says. “Can I hear what they’re saying?”

 

Emma folds her lips and nods. “Yeah, but that’s a little trickier. Oh! Sidney just walked in!”

 

Regina whirls her hands, summoning Emma closer. The marshal tugs her earlobe, twists it several times, and moves behind the captain’s chair. She curls her left arm around Regina’s shoulders, putting the vidscreen at close viewing range, and leans down to press her left ear directly against Regina’s right ear. Tinny voices funnel into Regina’s brain, and she hears Sidney Glass speaking to Rupert Gold.

 

_“You’ll have your chance to investigate the signal, doctor.”_

 

_“And how is that, Mr. Overseer, sir?”_

 

She watches their body language, hears their words. Hears Emma’s breathing mingle with her own. Feels the hard heat of Emma’s jaw, the softer warmth of breasts pressed against her back.   

 

_“…compromise… shuttle… investigate…rescue mission…my command…departure in the morning…”_

 

It goes as well as she could possibly have imagined. Dr. Gold remains calm, holding still behind a large waveform monitor, and listens as Sidney lays out the whole deal. Eventually, he takes a set of headphones from around his neck, lays them gently aside, and moves to shake Sidney’s hand.

 

_“I owe you a debt for arranging this, Sidney.”_

 

Regina holds her breath, as does Emma, waiting to see if Glass will lie and take credit.

 

_“You owe an apology to Captain Mills. Her understanding of the situation far exceeds your estimation.”_

 

_“The captain proposed this? When?”_

 

_“Moments ago. Evidently, she’s been planning our mission all day.”_

 

_“All day, all day, all day… well, then. I suppose I have some planning to do myself.”_

 

_“Until tomorrow, doctor.”_

 

_“Bon soir, kind sir.”_

 

Sidney clips away. Gold waits for the door to close. Dons his headphones, takes them off, throws them violently against the wall shared by Belle’s office. In seconds, Belle rushes into the lab and goes to his side.

 

_“What’s happened?”_

 

_“I’m going. Tomorrow morning. I’m going.”_

 

_“Going where? To do what?”_

 

Gold turns to her, gently cups Belle’s face in his hands. Tears stream down his cheeks.

 

_“Belle… I’m going to find my son.”_

 

She smiles, nuzzles his eyes, kisses him. Sobbing, Gold crumbles in her arms.

 

Regina lays a hand across Emma’s forearm, hiding the vidscreen from view. “Turn it off. Please.”

 

Emma eases away, shuts down the surveillance feed. She wipes her eyes. Leans back against the counter, watching and waiting.

 

“I would not have seen that as a possibility. In fact, I missed it entirely,” Regina begins. She stares at the clean white tabletop because she can’t quite bear to look at Emma - who is almost certainly red-eyed and fighting tears. “I am not someone who… _feels_ easily. Personal relationships, the few I’ve had, are usually brief and lack emotional intimacy. I was raised to believe that love is merely a loophole, a trick that allows ruthless people to exploit and manipulate the weak.”

 

“Sometimes that’s true,” Emma gently says. 

 

Regina looks over, finds Emma staring down at the floor. She looks so young, with her hair blown loose and her feet bare, her nose red from crying because a man she dislikes might have a chance to reunite with his lost son.    

 

“But that can’t be true of everyone,” Regina continues. “I don’t believe that of you.”

 

Emma’s breath stutters. Regina goes to her, takes her warm hands and waits for Emma to meet her eyes. 

 

“I gambled on your theory today. I proved you right,” Regina tells her. “It’s your turn. Prove me right.”

 

Through a fading veil of tears, Emma Swan smiles at her. 

 

“I won’t let you down,” she promises, and takes Regina’s mouth in the finest kiss that ever was.

 

  

 

 


	9. The android story and the draft pick

 

It’s a good kiss, Emma thinks, though she’s certain she could do better. 

 

If only she could stop dreaming forward and just revel in the now, just enjoy the way Regina’s hands squeeze her fingers, the way Regina’s breath skips into her mouth. Even though it’s a good kiss, Emma can’t help pushing her luck, can’t help hoping that Regina wants more than a warm body in her arms for the night. 

 

Emma wants more, and wants to give even more than that. She longs for an auspicious beginning to a story she can help author, a fresh start with someone unafraid of effort, someone who fights and forgives, who sees love as a puzzle worth solving. She’s wanted this someone for as long as she can remember, but courageous lovers are damned scarce in her world.

 

She’s tripped over lies and stumbled into trouble, drank her fill of false hope and fallen into lonely beds. She’s hoped for connection and settled for breakfast and goodbye. Emma’s been a fool for love before.

 

_Maybe not this time. Please, not this time._

 

She holds Regina close and kisses her mouth every way she knows how: with softly pulling lips, probing licks, glancing teeth, with hungry sucks, and with a dozen pecks all tender as raindrops. She wants to give Regina every kiss she’s ever dreamed of receiving. Maybe if Emma gives them away they’ll come back to her multiplied, stronger, and sweeter yet. 

 

Regina accepts each one with pliant grace, simply letting herself be kissed and kissed. When Emma finally slows, when there’s finally an inch of space between them, Regina strokes her face, breathes hot against her ear, and enunciates her full name. In Regina’s mouth, the words are a chime, a tickled bell. It’s the first time Emma Swan loves her own name.

 

So happily nervous that her hands sweat and fingers shake, Emma can’t work the fasteners on Regina’s jacket. The hooks and rip panels are concealed along the centerline, preserving the sleek look of the garment.

 

“Emma,” Regina whispers. “I can…”

 

Frustrated and burning for more contact, Emma whips off her own sweater and tank in one motion. Arms circling Regina’s back, Emma crushes her bare chest and belly against the cool fabric of the captain’s Quorum uniform and kisses her deeply enough to drown all the words.

 

It’s clear Regina doesn’t want to stop. Her hands grip Emma’s waist like vises, embossing her skin with fingerprints. Her thighs are slotted between and around Emma’s legs, and her hips have begun to dance, working a faint drop and rise that taps her groin against Emma’s tensed quad. 

 

Regina twists her mouth free, and Emma lets her head fall back, baring her throat. Regina lays a chain of kisses across her jaw and down her neck, her lips so plush and certain that Emma feels decadent, corrupted, forever spoiled against inferior touch. A groan slides from her throat, and Regina pauses, looks up with a question in her eyes.

 

“ _Good_?” she seems to ask.

 

“Mmm,” Emma rumbles. She tugs again at the closures on Regina’s jacket. “Will you? I can’t…”

 

“Mmm.” 

 

Regina’s hands move away and Emma immediately misses the heat, the pressure. It’s cold in the kitchen, cold in her quarters, cold on this ship, and it’s fucking _cold_ in space. Her nipples are hard as titanium bolts and wildly sensitive; when Regina’s cuff brushes her breast, Emma shudders so hard she has to laugh. 

 

Regina arches a brow, smiles as she surveys Emma’s condition. “Cold, marshal?”

 

“Just the northern hemisphere,” she admits, because Baja Emma is experiencing a rapid warming trend. 

 

She regains her footing and recharges her confidence with a quick maneuver, spinning Regina around and lifting her up onto the counter with practiced leverage and little effort. The captain simply rolls her eyes and calls the marshal a show-off, an accusation Emma cannot refute. 

 

In her own show of force, Regina leans back, circles her legs around Emma’s middle and cinches tight. She flashes one of those smug smiles, the kind that first angered Emma and then intrigued her, because Regina looks both wicked and weirdly adorable when she’s pleased with herself. She squeezes a little, flexing her thighs as if challenging Emma to test her new restraints.

 

“The cleverest traps conceived by god or man,” Emma responds, quoting a favorite poem.

 

“Are those we’ve no desire to escape,” Regina finishes. Her smile turns quizzical, her eyes narrow. “You like Risa Wiri?”

 

“Just the romantic ones, not all the rebel-rousing political stuff. You?”

 

“Mmm. Same.” Regina snorts softly, shakes her head. “I read you wrong. You didn’t irritate me because you’re stupid; you got off on it.”

 

“Ah. Found out,” Emma concedes.

 

“Asshole.” Regina says it smiling.

 

“I know, right?” Emma smiles back, relieved to have it out in the open. “While we’re on this - Sidney hollered at me the first few times, gave me demerits and such, but thereafter it was always you. I started thinking, surely the _captain_ has better things to do…”

 

Regina nods, combs her fingers into Emma’s hair. “I knew the Overseer couldn’t handle you -”

 

“Damn straight.”

 

Pulls her face near and whispers, “and I suspected that you were going to be _such trouble_ -”

 

“Yeah, well…”

 

“That I decided to manage you myself,” Regina says, and kisses her firmly on the mouth. “Complaints? Concerns? Comments?”

 

“Only that your management style is sexy as fucking hell,” Emma says, prompting Regina to laugh and hug her, like she’s just received some amazing compliment. 

 

Emma wants to pull her even closer, but that damned ballistic knit uniform feels like sandpaper on her bare flesh. Regina, ever the problem-solver, unlocks her jacket and flings it away, revealing a bounty of lightly bronzed skin that makes Emma sigh and smile and think of sunny beaches she’s read about. Fitzgerald’s Cote d’Azure and Hemingway’s Havana are gone now, eaten by rising seas, but Regina survives, a warm and living natural wonder, with rounded breasts straining against her Quorum-issue black brassiere. She pops the front clasp and Emma moves in, nosing the cups aside, tucking her face between the captain’s soft tits.

 

She lingers there, inhaling her scent, stroking hands up her sides, feeling Regina’s legs tremble and tense. “You’re beautiful,” Emma says, breathing the words across Regina’s galloping heart. She looks up to find the beauty staring back; her eyes are kind, if somewhat amused by Emma’s oafish statement of fact. “Must’ve heard that a million times.”

 

“Almost,” Regina teases, “but it doesn’t count when people don’t truly see you. And they can’t, when you don’t show them who you really are.” 

 

Emma kisses Regina’s breast, ghosts her lips over the nipple, cuts her eyes upward. “Show me?”

 

Her breathing is shallow and her hand shakes, but Regina smoothes back Emma’s hair, caresses her cheek, and nods. “I will do my best.”

 

Coming from most people, Emma might hear that as an equivocation. From Regina Mills, a woman who fights and forgives, and who thrives on presenting a superior effort, it sounds like a vow. Maybe - just maybe - they can solve this stubborn puzzle together.

 

“I’ll never ask you for more,” Emma says, and hoists Regina off the counter and into her arms. The captain grumbles and huffs a little, but straps her legs across Emma’s backside and hangs on tight, all the way to the bed.

 

 

 

^>___^<<>>>

 

  

 

When Regina wakes, sunlight fills the bedroom windows and echoes off white walls like a silent morning alarm. She yawns and stretches as best she can, what with Emma lying halfway across her chest. She doesn’t know why she still worries about waking her; Emma sleeps deeply on average nights, and like a stone on nights when they make love. 

 

Last night, though, they didn’t make love. Last night, they fucked like newlyweds, grinding and thrusting and sweating until they apparently passed out. Regina guesses the end result because she’s naked, with a sticky, pulsing soreness between her legs and a lingering honey-lemon tang in her mouth. On average nights, she still has the energy to clean up and don sleepwear.

 

“Be still,” Emma says, her voice muffled against Regina’s breast. “S’early.”

 

“Some of us go to work early.”

 

“Some of us were up working late.” Emma lifts her head, peers at Regina, assessing her wild hair and swollen mouth, the suckled bruises likely staining her throat. “Hey, cap,” she says, and grins proudly, like the reigning and defending sex champion of the universe.

 

Her eyes are so blue in the sunlight. Regina could have sworn they were green. “Idiot,” Regina says, and kisses her forehead. “Fortunately, you’re gorgeous enough to compensate.”  

 

Self-conscious for no defensible reason, Emma frowns and her pale skin blushes pink. Regina tracks the color across her cheeks, down her neck to her chest, where the marshal wears several of her more intriguing scars. Curious, Regina rolls Emma onto her back and kneels above her, traces gently around the cluster of puncture wounds right over her lover’s heart. Emma squirms a bit, sensitive under examination, even though Regina doesn’t find the scars ugly. On the contrary, she’s amazed that Emma - with little money and less help - managed to heal her own wounds so beautifully. 

 

“Tell me this one,” Regina says, a command that sounds like a plea.

 

Emma hesitates, flattens her lips like she always does when stalling for time. Just when Regina fears she’s about to refuse, to wiggle free and head for the shower, Emma nods and offers a trade. “One scar told for one question answered.”

 

“Deal,” Regina instantly agrees. She promised to essay openness; time to test her conviction. “You first.”

 

“I was nineteen, chasing my first big bounty. Scuffers said the guy had three murders on his sheet, maybe a few more they couldn’t hang on him. I was dumb, went after him blind - no real intel, no real capture plan to speak of. I just staked out his victim's houses, one each night, for a month. Slept a few hours a day, barely ate. Thirty days in, he shows up near dawn at victim one’s house. Stands on the front walk and stares up at the bedroom window like he’s in a trance. Guy was huge, like six-foot-six, and I didn’t have a gun. So I took the only weapon I could afford back then - a cheap little hot bat, a shocker with the weakest battery going - and I jumped him.”

 

“Emma…”

 

“Please don’t tell me it was stupid because I _know_ it was stupid. I was exhausted and underfed and I hadn’t really fought anyone that big before, so I tried to surprise him. Just ran up and pushed the charge points against his back and fired. He dropped to his knees and twitched, and I really thought I had him. Sixty-thousand credits flashed before my eyes. And then my battery sparked out. He turned around and smiled at me, and in that second, I remember thinking that he looked familiar. He was really handsome, had cropped silver hair and pale blue eyes, and I just knew I had seen his face somewhere before.”

 

Regina has a hunch, a suspicion about this familiar stranger, though she keeps silent and lets Emma tell the tale.

 

“He yanked that hot bat away and snapped it like a chopstick. All the copper rods inside were busted and jagged, sparking with leftover juice, and he drove one end right for my heart. The charge spikes popped straight through my breastbone. It just… it happened so fast. Just a couple seconds between winning and dying.”

 

Only she didn’t die. Emma’s heart still beats, strong and steady. Regina feels it thudding softly under her palm, though she can’t recall placing her hand there.

 

“I remember thinking that it didn’t hurt any worse than a hard punch, except that it _tickled_ inside my chest. I never imagined dying would tickle, so what the hell - I started laughing. Stranger still, he laughed, too. We just kept on like a couple of lunatics until I started choking on my own blood. When that happened, he actually looked _guilty_ , like he suddenly realized that he’d done something bad. He laid me down on the sidewalk, apologized, gave me a credit card and called emergency medical. Then he ran off.”

 

“He was…”

 

“Yes, indeed - a homicidal, bipolar android,” Emma says. “Thanks a lot, Spencer Tech.”

 

Regina sits back on her heels, numb and reeling. As a child, she’d read about Albert Spencer’s grand experiment: the aged, eccentric tycoon developed a score of androids programmed with advanced learning algorithms and secretly released them into the world. Years later, after sixteen of the androids were captured or killed, hundreds of murders were attributed to these synthetic men. Spencer was arrested, convicted by a Quorum tribunal, and hanged. From the gallows, he said the androids were blank slates when they left his company. 

 

 _“Twenty lumps of wet clay thrown onto the wheel, and our violent world sculpted sixteen monsters,”_ Spencer had said. _“Hang me; we’re all shite-souled bastards, anyhow.”_

 

In addition to their towering intellectual abilities, the Spencer synthetics possessed superhuman strength and speed. Emma was incredibly lucky to escape with her life. Regina will not torture either of them by belaboring that point. Instead, she asks a wayward question: “What was the tickling?”

 

Emma squints like she expects an angry response. “Residual sparks discharging inside my chest cavity.”

 

She regrets ever asking about the damned scar. She’ll never ask about another. Regina presses her palm more firmly against Emma’s chest. “You were burned… inside?”

 

“Just singed a little,” Emma says. Her hands sneak around Regina’s sides and gently squeeze her bottom. “My heart didn’t really catch fire until I met you.”

 

 _Idiot_ , Regina thinks, but does not say. _Beautiful, cheerful, clever brute. Flesh and bone, mortal girl. Stay with me, stay..._  

 

“My dear,” she says. “You are expressly forbidden from engaging androids in combat.”

 

Emma only grins and nods, and leans up for a kiss. “My turn. Why did you join the Quorum?”

 

Regina shifts forward until she’s mostly sitting on Emma’s abs. “I wanted to be free.”

 

“You joined a highly regimented military organization and launched yourself into deep space inside a big metal ant farm because you wanted to be free?”

 

She sighs, gives Emma a grave look. “You’ve never met my mother.”

 

It’s hard to tell who starts laughing first, but it gets loud really fast and soon they’re rolling around the king-sized bed in a mass of tangled sheets and tossed pillows, trapped somewhere between a tickle fight and foreplay.

 

The knock at the door takes them both by surprise. They stop moving, and for a moment all is quiet inside the bedsheet cocoon as two adult women go still as statues, afraid of getting caught fooling around in their own bed. It’s all too silly for Emma, and she softly bites down on Regina’s upper arm to stifle her laughter.

 

“Yes?” Regina calls.      

 

“Mom?” a young boy replies. “I know you said to let you guys sleep in, but Coach’s truck won’t start and it’s almost eight o’clock, so someone’s gotta drive me to soccer practice.”

 

“Be right there, kid,” Emma yells. “You have breakfast yet?”

 

“Blueberry bagel and turkey bacon,” he says.

 

“Good fella. Now go away.”

 

Regina hears him muttering half-hearted complaints as his footfalls recede down the stairs. She loves him. Emma loves him. But she really doesn’t want either of them to leave this bed because it feels like the warmest, safest, best place in the world. Even better now that Emma is kissing her face, sliding a thigh between her legs, whispering irresponsible suggestions like _quickie_ and _one for the road_.

 

She’s wet enough for anything and Emma’s moving lower, kissing and sucking and _there’s the tongue…_

 

And there is the doorbell, ringing and ringing and Emma is cursing. She kisses Regina once more and struggles free of the sheets.

 

The room goes pitch dark as soon as Emma leaves the bed. Regina can’t see a damn thing. She feels displaced, floaty and nauseous; it’s worse than her first week of zero-gravity training. She hears Emma stumble through the bedroom door, cursing at her incessant door chime. Disoriented, Regina eases out of bed and reaches out blindly until her fingers brush against one of Emma’s magnetic shelves, triggering the automated illumination. The light helps; at least she’s now certain of her location. 

 

Her dream was so real that it’s proving difficult to shake. She remembers a white room filled with sunlight, a large bed, and Emma Swan. They were themselves and yet they were not. And there was a boy, a son… their son. No one said his name, but Regina knows. 

 

“Computer, time,” Regina calls. Red digits glow on the ceiling, displaying the time as 03:30 hours.

 

Noise from the kitchen. Emma looking for her discarded clothes, she guesses. Regina does the same, pulling on her trousers and boots and the only top in sight - Emma’s jacket. She zips it up and instantly feels better, steadier, wrapped in Emma’s workaday armor.

 

“The hell are you doing here?” Emma is saying, loudly enough for Regina to hear. 

 

She takes the cue and moves to the bedroom doorway, listening. The next voice she hears nearly makes her gasp in surprise.

 

“I do apologize for the late hour, marshal. You see, I am an insomniac. As such, I tend to conduct business around the clock,” says Dr. Rupert Gold.

 

“We have no business,” Emma says. “Get lost.”

 

“Ah, ah, ah! I disagree, seeing as you made my business your business and then made our business the captain’s business,” Gold rambles. “You saw Overseer Glass visit my lab. You told Captain Mills. Next thing you know, Regina is sending me and my dear friend Sidney on an extended field trip in a shuttle equipped with a customized cryogenic preservation unit - _your_ customized cryogenic preservation unit. I know these things because I know many things. Also because the unit registration code traces back to your Quorum contractor ID number.”

 

Regina feels her hands go numb, cold. She stuffs them in the jacket pockets. _Just a couple seconds between winning and dying…or losing, which is bad enough._

 

“What do you want?” Emma asks, her voice little more than a whisper.

 

“I want what every man of science wants: answers. I want to find this signal and decode its secrets. I also want what every father would want, were they in my shoes: I want to find my son, Neal, who vanished in this region two years ago. I believe these two quests are not mutually exclusive. I believe that if I find this signal source, then I will find my boy,” says Gold. “And you, Miss Swan, are going to help me.”

 

Emma laughs, brief and coarse. “Excuse me?”

 

“You find hidden people. It’s what you do. You’re also durable and clever, reputedly good in a fight - all qualities lacking in the Overseer,” Gold explains. “If you do those things that you do so well, for me, I promise to make no trouble for Regina or her ship. Refuse me, and I shall remain on board, and heaven only knows what kind of hijinks I might get up to.”

 

After too long a pause, Emma asks why she should care. Gold leans into the cracked doorway and slowly reaches up to straighten something on Emma’s collar. 

 

“Congratulations,” he says. “Only six months on a Quorum ship and already a captain.”

 

Regina realizes then that, in the dizzy darkness, Emma has put on _her_ uniform jacket. With the twin gold rank bars at the collar. 

 

“Pack your kit and meet me on the Corsair-2 at nine, sharp,” Gold orders. “And give my best to Regina.”

 

 

 

 


	10. The threats and the delta wave twins

 

 

Regina stomps out of the bedroom to find Emma slumping against the front door. The marshal looks every bit as unsettled and fragile as Regina feels, yet she can’t stop herself from raising her voice. “You’re not doing this. There is no way in hell I’m letting that son of a bitch dictate -”

 

“What are you gonna do?” Emma interrupts, her voice low and thin. 

 

“I’ll lock him in the brig! He attempted to entice my Overseer to mutiny!”

 

Emma regards her with quirked lips and a raised brow. “And how will you prove that?”

 

Regina opens her mouth to reply, and realizes that since her only evidence was illegally obtained, she _can’t_ prove Gold’s treachery without wrecking her own career and facing a disciplinary tribunal. Glass would never admit the truth; he kept quiet about his knowledge, a tribunal offense in itself. She’s stuck for action, and the unfamiliar sense of inertia infuriates her. She balls a fist and pounds it hard against her thigh.

 

“Hey, don’t do that,” Emma says, bouncing off the door and walking closer. “We just got your other bruises sorted. Don’t go making new ones.”

 

 _I don’t know what to do,_ Regina almost admits. Instead, she just says, “I should never have involved you.”

 

Emma shakes her head. “I’m not a happy barnacle; I like moving, doing.” She takes Regina’s fists, gently uncurls her fingers, and holds her hands. “If Gold’s son is out there, I can find him. We’ll have all this shit settled in a couple days, tops.”

 

Something in Regina chafes at the offer to meet Gold’s demand. She would prefer to fight, both for the principal and for Emma. “You shouldn’t have to go. You _don’t_ have to. I will find another way to manage him.”

 

“Because who doesn’t want to play mind games with an obsessive, vindictive genius?”

 

“Because I’m not afraid of him,” Regina says, with a hint of steel in her tone. “If Gold comes at me head-on, I will destroy him.”

 

“That’s just it; he’ll come at you _sideways_ ,” Emma argues, “maybe stir up trouble with other crew members, sucker innocent people into his schemes. Maybe the best way to manage him is just to give in. Let him go looking for his son, or this signal, or both.”

 

“And let him drag you along for the ride?” Regina snorts, pulls her hands away. She finds appeasement hateful and odious, too reminiscent of countless compromises she endured to placate her mother.

 

“It’s an ace move. Gold says he wants my help, but he also wants leverage over you.” Emma looks down at Regina’s half-fastened uniform jacket, the garment she mistakenly put on in the darkness. “Thanks to my tell-tale wardrobe malfunction, he thinks I fit the bill on both counts.”

 

Regina notes the wording: _thinks_ instead of _knows_. Emma is willing to jaunt away on an aimless mission, half surrounded by enemies, in order to protect Regina, yet she won’t presume Regina actually gives a damn about her. At least, that’s how it sounds. Regina wants to tell her she’s wrong, but words often carry little weight with facile speakers. If she wants to get the point across to Emma, perhaps action would be best.

 

“I’ll be right back,” Regina says, marching for the door. She hears shuffling footsteps behind, and turns to halt Emma with a stern glare and a wagged finger. “ _Stay_ … please.”

 

The marshal comically bugs her eyes, turtles her chin down toward her chest. “Umm… okay?”

 

Regina wants to smile, thinks of a sun-soaked white bed and morning laughter, and almost gives in. “Thank you. This won’t take long.”

 

She flings open the door and slams it shut, sending a purposeful, angry boom down the corridor. Walking fast, she barely gets up a head of steam before she spots Gold casually leaning against the wall near the lift station, waiting for her. 

 

“Almost two minutes! Positively slothful,” he says. “Either you were getting dressed, or you really don’t care for this girl very much.”

 

Regina closes the distance between them in a few long strides, bares her teeth and raises her hand above her head. A visible tremor ruins Gold’s calm affect - he believes she intends to strike him, and he flinches. Instead, Regina slaps her palm hard against the wall, just beside his head, and leans in close to his face.

 

“For a documented genius, you’re pretty fucking stupid,” she whispers. 

 

Gold raises his brows, grins at her rare use of a blue shocker. “How’s that?”

 

Regina eases back to a friendlier distance. Her toothy, dead-eyed glare remains fixed and steady. “The marshal is a free citizen and under no obligation to join Quorum missions. It’s your good fortune that Emma is a kind person who actually wants to help you. However, I take umbrage with the _subtext_ of your request,” Regina tells him. “In the spirit of reciprocity, perhaps I could find a few interesting projects for Ensign French, some challenging extracurriculars to keep dear Belle occupied in your absence.”

 

His eyes veritably spin with fury, and she knows he understands. “Regina, don’t,” Gold says, in a voice soft as a serpent’s tongue. “Just don’t.”

 

“Leverage has a dual nature, Rupert,” says Regina. “When we shift an obstacle, we are met with a corresponding force. Knowing this, we should employ our levers with care and caution.”

 

Gold flares his nostrils and exhales heavy and hot, as if trying to expel some excess anger. After several breaths, he gives a barely perceptible nod. “I intend the girl no harm,” says Gold. “I simply need answers, Regina. For two sleepless years, I’ve wondered if my boy is still alive out here, lost and alone, waiting for help. I need to know what this signal is… and what it is _not_.”

 

Regina feels her attitude soften, fractionally, and folds her arms tight across her chest. “You don’t need Emma Swan for that.”

 

“Oh, Regina - I believe I do. You, dearie, are a soldier with heart and mind in lockstep, and the Quorum doesn’t hand out commendations for empathy. Yet you’ve given me a shuttle and a crew, all the necessary equipment to track and investigate transmissions both familiar and anomalous, and - displaying rather keen insight - the means to recover and treat cryo-sleepers. Forgive my presumption, but I don’t believe you came to this insight alone,” Gold says. “That hopeful inclusion bears Emma Swan’s tender fingerprints.”

 

 _He’s guessing. Shooting in the dark. And hitting the bullseye._ Regina laughs shortly, knowing it barely covers her discomfort. “When, exactly, did you become an expert on the marshal?”

 

“I claim no intimate knowledge,” Gold says with a wink, “but Belle likes her very much, and I’ve found her character evaluations to be startlingly accurate. Belle holds that Emma - our flinty, wise little orphan - is a born seeker, one who scours both stories and stars in search of knowledge, love, family. Orphans understand loneliness, abandonment, the never-ending wish for a parent’s protection. She’ll help me find Neal because it’s an irresistible bit of emotional surrogacy - championing a father on a quest to save his son.”

 

It’s startling, Regina thinks, how the man reads as sincere and manipulative in equal measure. Trying to work out the minuscule difference would be pointless, because the ratios could skew drastically with his next words, his next smile or glower. She only knows that she doesn’t trust him with her ship, her crew, or with Emma. He must be managed, contained, as neatly as possible - and that requires a gesture of propitiation.  

 

“As stated, the marshal has offered her assistance,” Regina says, employing every effort to maintain her poise. “But know that if you abuse that privilege, I will make you sorry.”

 

“I don’t doubt that,” Gold says. He stands straight, smoothes the front of his dark blue uniform, readying to depart. But Regina has one more question.

 

“How did you know about…” she trails off squinting, knows he understands the implied finish.

 

“Initially, I did _not_ know, mainly because I thought you incapable of such a daring choice,” he admits. “It came clear in drips and drops, as these things do. I first went to your quarters a short while ago, aiming to query you about adding the marshal to my mission roster. Then I proceeded to the bridge and asked Commander Hayes if he knew where you might be. He seemed rather discombobulated by the question, but eventually related that you had plans with Marshal Swan earlier in the evening. And, well, _here we are_.” 

 

Gold flashes an impish smile and taps Regina’s arm, tugs at the sleeve of Emma’s ballistic leather jacket. The programmable palette is set to Carmine red. 

 

“Quorum uniforms are so crushingly drab. I daresay this color suits you better,” he remarks. “ _Bonne nuit, mon capitaine_.”

 

Regina watches him walk away and actively hates his happy, lilting gait. She hugs herself tighter, until the jacket’s soft leather curls between her fingers. It feels like she has failed Emma, somehow, by not thinking up a better option, or by not simply arresting Gold now and facing her fate when the ship returns to port in eighteen months. 

 

An exploration posting was supposed to provide her with two years of peace and quiet, give her time to plan out her next career moves, to think seriously about relocating to a colony, finding a partner and starting a family. Now, six months in, all she has to show is a burgeoning feud with a brilliant sociopath, a broken dalliance with a besotted colleague, and a bewildering affection for a sweet-souled rogue. 

 

She barely knows Emma Swan and she’s already entertained thoughts of tanking her career to protect the girl. It’s impossible to predict how deep and wild that affection might grow, given care enough, and time. Suddenly, Regina needs every minute of those eighteen months, and knows even that wouldn’t be enough.  

 

 _She’s going away. In a few hours, she’s going away._ Regina thinks of her father waking her near dawn with promises of catching the biggest fish in the lake, if only they got on the water before the fishies had their morning coffee. _Get moving, princess!_ he would say, _Time’s a’wasting!_

 

Back at Emma’s by a count of nine, she realizes she has cut her lift-to-door record by a full second. She doesn’t knock, just pops the lever and enters Emma’s quarters like it’s second nature, like she knew Emma would leave the door open for her. 

 

She finds the marshal in the kitchen, double fisting tall glasses of water and apple juice. The purloined uniform jacket hangs open, revealing glimpses of stomach and rib and breast, Emma’s pale skin and snow-white scars surrounded by Quorum blue. The sight inspires Regina to lust, and tenderness, and a rush of greed that’s probably the closest thing to love Regina Mills has ever felt. 

 

Emma looks up, sees, and waits.    

 

Regina walks to her carefully, slowly, because her knees are literally shaking. She doesn’t stop until she’s leaning against Emma, who leans against the counter. She takes the marshal’s juice and throws it back, then steals the rest of her water. 

 

“Better?” Emma asks, very very softly.

 

Regina nods, sets the glasses on the counter, and kisses Emma’s wet, candied mouth until they’re both trembling. Her cold hands hunger for warm flesh, slide over slim hip and taut buttock, across the darling dimples at the base of Emma’s spine, around her sinewed waist and up to her pert, palm-sized breasts. Nipples wake to her fingers, and every tease and tweak is met by a tiny, gorgeous, stuttered breath against her mouth, her cheek, her ear.

 

She kisses south, paints heat down Emma’s neck and chest until her lips purse around a tight, wrinkled nipple. Regina kisses gently, licks softly, then opens up wide and takes the breast in her hot mouth, sucking and pulling until her mouth is full of Emma’s skin, until she feels the girl’s heartbeat against her lips… until she feels the circle of scars brush against her cheek.

 

She pauses. Sobers. Glances up at Emma. 

 

Emma’s fingers are threaded through Regina’s hair, clenching tight around her skull. Her head hangs low, mouth open, breathing fast. She’s so gone on sensation that it takes a moment to register the change. She blinks her eyes open and looks down. “What?” she says, the word barely a huffed breath. 

 

“Don’t trust Gold,” Regina tells her. She follows the command with a kiss to Emma’s stomach.

 

Emma nods, flexes her fingers against Regina’s scalp. “I won’t.”

 

“Don’t trust Sidney,” Regina says, this time with a kiss to her other breast.

 

Emma smiles, chuckles softly. “I won’t.”

 

Regina drags the point of her tongue sideways and lays a warm, wet kiss on the round of punctures over Emma’s heart. “And no engaging androids in combat.”

 

Emma hums, and Regina feels the vibration tickle her lips. “Well, I did promise.”

 

 _Yes, you did,_ thinks Regina. _You promised…in my dream._

 

She goes still, quiet, trying to sort out how such a thing is possible. Then she realizes that Emma has also gone slightly rigid, and is pulling her up by the shoulders of her jacket.

 

“Wait - when did I tell you how I got that scar?” the marshal asks.

 

Regina straightens and squeezes her eyes shut tight, tries to shake the fuzzy confusion from her mind. “In bed.”

 

“My little bed?”

 

“Hardly. This was a big bed, stupidly large -”

 

“With white sheets?” Emma interjects. “In a white room with eastern windows?”

 

“Yes.” Now Regina feels more than dizzy; she’s actually a little scared. It must show, because Emma takes her hands and holds tight.

 

“Do you remember details? Of what we talked about, where we were? Anything?”

 

“You were nineteen, chasing sixty-thousand credits for a Spencer synthetic, although you didn’t know that until you attacked him with a shocker and he nearly killed you.”

 

Emma’s eyes go very wide. “Yeah. You remember plenty,” she says. “So, in your dream… was there a kid?”

 

Regina smiles weakly, still warmed by the memory of her love for this imagined son. “A young boy. Maybe nine or ten years old. I think his name was -”

 

“Henry.” Emma is smiling now, nodding and almost laughing. “Damn. One night together and we’re already dreaming about houses and kids. I feel like such a cliche.”

 

“I believe you’re missing the point,” Regina says, rather shortly. “We dreamed the same dream at the same time. That’s not possible.”

 

“Possible is a pretty fungible concept,” Emma retorts. “And people on this ship have been dreaming some crazy shit since that signal kicked on.”

 

Emma proceeds to relate the tales of Belle French, Rory Phillips, and Ruby Lucas, all of whom experienced vivid nightmares on the night the SQ-9 first received that peculiar and indecipherable transmission. Regina believes in coincidence as a matter of daily course, but cannot reconcile the outbreak of nightmares and their shared dream as independent occurrences.

 

“There’s a link,” she says, beginning to fret and pace the kitchen.

 

“Yeah, probably,” Emma agrees.

 

“Perhaps the signal is interfering with REM sleep, disturbing our alpha and delta waves somehow.”

 

Emma gives an affable nod. “Sounds plausible.”

 

“But how could it cause our brain waves to sync up so precisely?”

 

“Dunno,” Emma says, shrugging.

 

Regina halts, flashes an irritated scowl at the marshal. “Why aren’t you worried about this?”

 

“I am worried, for my friends, for other people who can’t sleep or are too scared to sleep,” Emma says. “But we can’t fix anything tonight. Tomorrow, I’m going on a field trip with a super-smart jerkball who might be able to sort it all out, and I’ll help him as much as I can. Until then, I’m just thankful that my dream was so fucking _nice_.”

 

“Nice,” Regina echoes. She can’t argue that point, because it was. So very fucking nice.

 

“I liked being there with you.” Emma approaches, takes Regina in her arms. “It felt like… I don’t even know.”

 

 _Like home,_ Regina wants to suggest, because that’s how it felt for her - like a true home, replete with comfort and safety, abounding with love. While the marshal possesses a sizable vocabulary, that simple, crucial word holds no subjective meaning for Emma. The realization stings Regina like a hot needle. She feels tears prick the backs of her eyes. 

 

“I don’t have to leave for a few hours,” Emma says, hugging in closer, tucking her face into Regina’s hair. “Wanna see if we can find our way back to that big bed?”

 

Regina smirks. “Eighty percent of that bed was wasted. As I recall, you slept mainly on top of me.”

 

Emma looks up, blinks slowly. “That a complaint?”

 

In answer, Regina gives her a small kiss. She takes Emma’s hands and leads her to the bedroom, peels off her trousers and tosses aside her precious, overly complicated uniform jacket. Lays Emma Swan on the narrow bed and touches her, tastes her, rocks her body to sleep. 

 

She has no way of knowing whether Emma reaches the sunny white room, because Regina can’t follow her into slumber. She holds Emma loosely, lets her shift and breathe and move without restraint. She wants to tighten her grasp, but she knows it won’t matter. The night has already slipped through her fingers, and soon the morning will take Emma away.  

 

With her lover’s head pillowed on her bosom, Regina lies awake and stares at the ceiling clock, watching the red minutes bleed down to goodbye.

 

 

 

 


	11. The faux ranger and the load out

Emma wakes at 07:00, roused by gentle beeps falling from her bedroom ceiling. She recognizes the beeping as an alert from the ship’s computer, but she doesn’t recall setting an alarm. 

 

 _Regina,_ she realizes, and smiles into her pillow. Face down and still mostly sleep-dumb, she reaches expectantly across the small bed and finds only cold sheets. _Right. Captains don’t sleep in._  

 

Despite her disappointment at being deprived of a ‘good morning,’ or even a ‘goodbye,’ Emma won’t feel sorry for herself. Instead, she arches her calves, curves her lower back, stretches her shoulders, and revels in the elastic, battered bliss of sexual aftermath: nerve endings sharp and shining, muscles loose and twangy as untuned guitar strings, veins thrumming with percolated blood. 

 

Emma can’t recall the last time she felt this good. Maybe because she’s _never_ felt this good, even after really good sex. And what happened last night wasn’t just good sex, it was borderline magical, leading her to wonder whether Regina Mills is some type of sorceress or just an incredibly gifted prodigy.    

 

At some point during their first go, while testing the articulation of Emma’s hips and the flexibility of her thighs, Regina casually mentioned that she’d never bedded a woman before. At a slightly later point in time, Emma accused her of lying. Screamed it, laughed it, whispered the charge into Regina’s mouth. The captain seemed more amused than affronted, and insisted it was true.

 

 _How can that be?_ Emma had asked. _The things you’re doing to me…_

 

 _You’re not exactly inscrutable, dear,_ Regina replied, grinding down as Emma gasped and bucked. She danced fingertips along Emma’s tensed brow, over her slitted eyelids and shivering mouth. _You have an honest face, Emma Swan. I’m trusting you to guide me._

 

Emma thinks of Regina’s eyes glowing in the dim bedroom, those little pools of black and stars, watching, seeing, learning how best to love her. She groans, hugs the pillow to her chest, and finds herself inhaling a minty hint of Regina’s dry shampoo spray. In the next breath she’s burrowing deeper, searching the pillowcase for every trace of Regina’s sweat and skin, the oil of her hair, the ghost of her breath - evidence that she was _here_ and last night was not just another dream.   

 

 _Fuck’s sake. Quit being so weird,_ Emma tells herself, rolling over and setting the pillow aside. _Shake it off. Stuff to do. Move your ass._

 

The shower helps. Nothing clears the mental cobwebs like staccato blasts of lukewarm air impregnated with surfactants and exfoliants, although Emma does long for the luxury of full-body immersion in hot water, a treat she only experienced on Earth. 

 

When Emma could convince someone to vouch for her and provide a guest pass, she practically skipped down to one of the Headwater spas. These bathhouses were almost entirely peopled with refugee criminals, but she usually felt safe since the gold-toothed Baltic crowd did not tolerate violence or harassment in these steamy havens. No one was _working_ at the spa, so Emma could lounge for hours in marble pools, surrounded by murderers and smugglers and political dissidents, without fear of disturbance. It was utterly surreal, and kind of skeevy, but Emma wasn’t one to nitpick such a rare extravagance.

 

There _was_ danger, though; some of those dissidents would have gutted Emma if they had known who she really was, if they had been paranoid enough to demand the Baltics run her DNA sheet. Luckily, no one bothered to check her background or lineage, beyond confirming that she was an orphaned skip tracer with a funny name that leant itself to bird jokes. 

 

Her surname was, in point of fact, a joke, born when one SAC intake officer balked at baby Emma’s pinched, ruddy face and deemed her an ugly duckling. Another worker, a cheerless and pessimistic soul, sang a line from an old pop song: “ugly ducklings don’t turn into swans and glide off down the lake…”

 

They paired this random, rootless quip with the swaddled infant’s only scrap of identification - a downy white blanket embroidered with the name _Emma_ \- and processed yet another abandoned child into the sanctuary system _._ At least this was how her counselor told the tale some years later, when Emma was old enough to wonder where her family had gone, and whether she could ever rejoin the Swan wedge and fly away home.

 

That was a long time ago, when little Emma equated family with identity and salvation. Children may believe in the power of blood, imagining that genetic brew carries magical properties like _home_ and _protection_ and _love_ , but Emma eventually learned better. She knows now that blood is nothing but an iron squish of inherited disease, impotent resentment, and back-breaking obligations.

 

Those obligations? Emma is about ready to shift them off her shoulders. If she can just make it eighteen more months, make it back to port and get her contract payout, it’ll all be over. She’ll finally be free.

 

 _Already put in twelve years. What’s another year and a half?_ thinks Emma. _I can handle eighteen months of food and shelter and friends and books. And I’ll need at least eighteen months to win over Regina Mills._

 

“Who’re you kidding?” Emma says to the naked fool in her mirror. “Eighteen _years_ with that woman, you might make a dent.”

 

She laughs at herself for even thinking such silly things, for dreaming about white bedrooms, easy mornings, children, for even daring to joke about a future with Regina beyond this voyage. She shakes her head and forgives her own folly, because she understands that this is what dreams are for - to let people like Emma reach for lives they’ll probably never touch.

 

She dresses in boots, dark blue fitted trousers and a gray insulated compression shirt. Not her favorite garments, but they’ll fit better under the Quorum flight suit required for shuttle missions. She braids her rowdy hair into a neat, low-maintenance plait. Though it’s a practical choice, Emma hates the style; it always gives her a headache. 

 

She looks in the mirror and feels unsettled, barely recognizes the sleek, polished figure staring back. Then, all at once, Emma realizes _why_ this combo makes her uneasy: add a flame badge to her collar and a blue dragon across her chest, and Emma could pose for a fucking Quorum Rangers advert. She rolls her eyes and fakes a swagger, wishing Regina could see her in this stupid get-up. 

 

_Ah, hell. Maybe no one will notice._

 

Emma stuffs a black duffel with undies and toiletries, weapons and tools, and Belle’s loaned reading pad. She also packs a few scraps of homemade safety equipment that - strictly speaking - are not Quorum regulation. The gimcrack engineering of her thumb-sized oxygen ampules, for example, is nothing to brag about, but Emma always travels with this ‘oh shit kit,’ and it has saved her life on more than one occasion.

 

Hoisting the bag onto her shoulder, she opens her bedroom door and immediately smells coffee and pastry. On the kitchen table sits a PX tray bearing espresso, cinnamon muffins, and two shiny red apples. A folded paper card stands between the apples, and Emma practically throws her bag down to reach for it.

 

_360, marshal_

 

_R._

 

Emma reads it again. Turns the stiff, heavy-gauge card over and checks the back for a clue, a cheat code, a key to unlock the meaning.

 

“I don’t…” 

 

Flummoxed, Emma sits down, sips hot coffee, stuffs two muffins in her mouth. She wasn’t expecting Regina to pen a paean to her beauty and grace and general awesomeness, but Emma hoped for more than a riddle, an honorific, and an initial.

 

“Hmm.”

 

She examines the calligraphic lettering, scratches the card and sniffs, and is surprised to find the words are not merely inked onto the paper, but burned in with a hot stylus. It’s such a cultured, manor-born thing to do, etching notes on cardstock with Montblanc lasers. This is not what one does when one wishes to dash off a meaningless missive; Emma knows this particular mode of expression requires skill, and effort, and time. 

 

Regina’s penmanship is precise, lovely, and her words - though few and cryptic - are indelible. So maybe Emma doesn’t _get_ the message, but she gets the message. She tucks the note and the apples into her duffel, pops the last muffin into her mouth, and slugs down the espresso on her way out. 

 

By the time Emma reaches the hangar deck, she feels positively bubbly, aerated by caffeine and sugar and dum-dum hope.

 

Dr. Gold trots down the Corsair-2 ramp and gives a hearty wave. Emma’s happiness ebbs, but she waves back.

 

“Greetings, marshal. You look ready, if not rested,” he says, with the barest hint of good humor.

 

Emma shrugs. “Some rude cocksucker woke me up in the middle of the night.”

 

Gold quirks his thin lips into a grin. “Yes, well. Even the mildest souls can _become_ rude cocksuckers, when properly motivated.”

 

She nods, almost grins back. To Emma’s mind, qualities like humor and self-awareness almost make villains bearable, both in literature and life. The people she can’t fathom are those who commit misdeeds and can’t be bothered to examine _why;_ but it seems Dr. Gold isn’t that sort of miscreant. She might be able to work with this guy.

 

“Seen the flight plan yet?” she asks.

 

“Ah, yes. Sergeant Lance?” Gold calls. “A moment, please?”

 

Thudding footsteps sound inside the shuttle and a mountainous man, near six-point-five feet of knotted muscle, descends the ramp. Sgt. Huron Lance approaches, glances at his own gray and blue Ranger uniform, and examines Emma’s lookalike outfit.

 

“Strong choice, marshal,” he says, in a voice like faded thunder.

 

“Coincidence?” Emma offers an apologetic shrug.

 

Lance shakes his head. “Good omen,” he says, and plucks at the blue dragon wings unfurled across his massive chest. “Frosty takes care of her own.”

 

Emma sighs in relief, somehow warmed by the assertion that Frostclaw - the emblematic guardian of the Quorum Rangers - is now on her side. “Good to know. How long will we need her protection?”

 

“Lieutenant Jones’ flight plan says twenty hours out and thirty back. With a generous action window factored in, we’re looking at sixty hours, if it’s a clean three-sixty.”

 

Emma squints, does a slight double-take. “Three-sixty?”

 

“Q pilot term for a safe round trip.”

 

 _360, marshal,_ the note read. _Round trip. Go, but come back. Come back._

 

Emma pauses, chews that over, and decides that 360 might be her favorite number. 

 

“Miss Swan? Are you quite alright?” Gold asks. 

 

She bobs her head so hard it makes her dizzy. “Yeah, square-up. Who are we waiting on?”

 

“Specialist Holley is already on board, stowing his medical gear,” says Gold. “We await the arrival of our grand and glorious Overseer.”

 

“But you’re not leaving without saying goodbye!” a voice calls from across the deck. 

 

Gold’s expression instantly softens, and he turns to face an angry, onrushing Belle French. Lance makes himself scarce and Emma discreetly drifts aside to give them some privacy.

 

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says, taking her hands, kissing her palm. “You need your sleep.”

 

“No, I really don’t.” Belle sounds tired, frustrated, and perhaps frightened. “Waking me would have been a mercy.”

 

“Another dream?” Gold whispers.

 

Belle nods, musters a faint laugh. “Even better than the last. As if losing my mind wasn’t bad enough, this time I completely forgot who I am. I behaved like a drunken harlot, running about in skimpy little dresses…”

 

Gold conspicuously clears his throat, and Emma suppresses a grin. Though she can’t imagine smart, classy Belle as a tarted-up louche cannon, Emma understands how that might hold some appeal for her lover.

 

“Take the pills,” Gold murmurs.

 

Belle looks down, lowers her voice. “I don’t want to take any bloody pills.”

 

“Come now; I’ve told you they’re safe. Nothing like the medication in your dreams. They’ll let you sleep, only not so deeply.”

 

“No dreams?”

 

“That’s how they worked for me,” Gold says, nodding. “Closest I’ve come to real sleep in two years.”

 

Belle leans in and smiles. “Maybe _you_ should start taking them again.”

 

“Bah, I’ve no time for sleep. Too much work to do.”

 

“Not for long. You’re going to find this signal source, and you’re going to find Neal.” Belle steps back and lifts her voice. “Isn’t that right, Emma?”

 

Emma stops pretending to organize her duffel and looks over. Belle’s face is the picture of fragile hope, and so Emma does the kindest thing she can think of: she lies. “Best believe. Every time I’ve gone looking for someone, I’ve found them.”

 

“You see? I told you!” Belle claps her hands onto Gold’s shoulders. “With her brains and your looks, you’ll make an unstoppable team.”

 

Gold laughs - honest, helpless laughter - and holds Belle close for a long time. Long enough that Emma shoulders her bag and heads for the shuttle. 

 

She feels a tickle in her left ear, scratches it as she walks, but the irritation only gets stronger. The tickle builds to a vibration, and then to a beep, the same shrill beeping tone her augmentation tech used to activate and test her audio receiver implant. Emma stops at the ramp edge, tweaks her earlobe and listens. She expects to hear static, or the sounds of Dr. Gold’s lab, as one of her bugs malfunctions. Instead, she hears soft breathing and a single voice saying her name.

 

“Emma? Can you hear me?” Regina says.

 

Stumped for how to respond, because her implant is a one-way receiver with no mic, Emma agitatedly waves her hands and stares up at the hangar deck catwalks.

 

“Petulance doesn’t suit you, dear,” Regina tells her, and Emma realizes she is being watched. She looks around, can’t find the captain anywhere, so she plants her feet and crosses her arms and waits.

 

“Come to the flight controller’s office.” Regina says it like an order, cool and official.

 

Emma hesitates, wondering why Regina won’t just come onto the flight deck. If she doesn’t feel comfortable saying goodbye to Emma specifically, she could at least speak to her crewmen. Emma kicks her heel against the ramp; even though she hasn’t activated the magnetic shanks in the soles, it feels like her boots cling to the steel decking.  

 

“Emma, I… before I see off the crew, I’d like to have a word,” Regina says, with slightly less starch. “With you. In private.”

 

And that’s all it takes. Emma tells Gold she’ll be right back, gets a hug and a thanks and sincere well-wishes from Belle, and she’s jogging toward the open corridor. The flight controller’s booth is right on the deck, but her office is six doors down and probably empty as she readies the shuttle for embarkation. Once Emma realizes this, she runs the rest of the way.  

 

Inside the office - which is more of a glorified cupboard, really - she finds Regina watching flight deck feeds on a wall bank of holographic monitors. The captain smirks at Emma’s accidental Ranger ensemble, but her eyes go wide and dark. “So _quick_ , marshal. Did you run?”

 

Emma puts her back against the door, catches her breath, and flashes Regina the bad finger. “Don’t taunt me; there’s an evil voice in my head.”

 

Regina raises her comm link to her mouth and whispers, directly into Emma’s left ear. “How do you know she’s evil?”

 

In two strides, Emma is off the door and on Regina, cradling her face and tasting her lips. “Because,” Emma explains between kisses, “she makes me want to do wicked things.”

 

Regina slips both hands down Emma’s back and gives her ass a bold squeeze. “Are you certain it’s not the other way around?”

 

“Maybe it’s _all the way_ around. Like a three-sixty,” Emma teases. 

 

“That’s not what I meant.”

 

“I know. _Now_ I know. The ranger explained.”

 

Air catches in Regina’s throat, and her face immediately stiffens. “You told Sergeant Lance?”

 

“Yes, I asked the big scary soldier to interpret my morning-after note from the captain.” Emma puffs her cheeks and rolls her eyes. “Relax; the question came up naturally, in conversation.”

 

Regina takes a deep breath. Her expression thaws, though it appears to take some effort. She pulls back and eyeballs Emma’s gray and blue ensemble. “I suppose he mistook you for a fellow dragon and just spilled all his secrets.”

 

Emma smiles and nods. “Frosty takes care of her own.”

 

“You look…” Regina trails off, leaves the blank for Emma to fill.

 

“Itchy? Clownish? Desperate? Like a mass of wasted potential?” 

 

Regina can’t find the words. She only shakes her head and tugs Emma close. They kiss for a while - deeper, softer, better by the minute - and Emma has to remind herself to breathe. Not even a day out from their first kiss, and they’re already so damned good, it’s like they’ve been doing this forever. Emma breathes, breathes, and every speck of air just _sparkles_ because _Regina_ … 

 

In that moment, Emma realizes that she _wants_ to do this forever. In that moment, forever feels possible, achievable, if she can just keep moving, doing, working toward her goal.  

 

 _Eighteen more months,_ Emma thinks. _Please please fucking please._

 

A loud buzz erupts from the overhead intercom, and the flight officer calls final prep for the Corsair-2. Emma starts to let go, to pull away, but Regina holds her still. She’s looking down, clenching her jaw, still unable or unwilling to release whatever words she’s holding back. Emma waits as long as she can stand it, and then tries to make it easy. 

 

“If you’re not doing anything tonight, you could read me a bedtime story.”

 

Regina’s lashes bat like hummingbird wings. She shrinks back a few inches, clearly confused. “What?”

 

Emma grins and taps her left ear. “Or you could just talk to me about… whatever. No one else could hear you. And you’re guaranteed to get the last word.”

 

“I get that anyway,” Regina says, and Emma lets her have that one. Her chest swells with a labored breath, and she finally opens her arms so Emma can slowly, grudgingly, take her leave. 

 

She’s at the door, holding the lever, when Regina flicks her braid over her shoulder.

 

“I don’t like this,” she says, her voice close on the back of Emma’s neck.

 

“Me, neither.”

 

“Leave your hair down, when you get back?”

 

“…okay.”  

 

She takes Emma’s hand. “Remember everything I told you last night, about Glass and Gold.”

 

“I do,” Emma says, and grips her fingers. She leans forward, flings the door open, because she’ll leave quickly now or not at all.

 

Sidney Glass is there, fist raised to knock. In a flash, his hawkish eyes collect their closeness, their mutual solemnity, their linked hands. Regina pulls away, but it’s too late. When the Overseer lowers his hand, Emma could swear it’s shaking. His face has gone ashen, almost gray. 

 

“Pardon, but the shuttle is boarding, captain,” he says, and marches off down the hall - away from the flight deck.

 

“Where are you going?” Regina calls.

 

Sidney mutters something about a last-minute errand, says he needs to see Commander Hayes. Regina, quite forcefully, orders him back and sends him on toward the shuttle. She follows, and Emma brings up the rear. 

 

At the Corsair-2 ramp, Regina gives a brief speech about the importance of scientific investigation, and the Quorum commitment to offer aid to vessels in distress. She cautions her crewmen to balance these priorities during their search for the signal, and urges them to work as a team.

 

“The SQ-9 will proceed on course to the Heigen Belt, but we will halve our speed to allow closer proximity in case you require aid. If you encounter danger - defined by protocol as hostile opponents, volatile spacial phenomena, or physical damage - you are _required_ to abandon your mission and make haste back to this ship. We will turn and burn back to your position. Is this understood?”

 

In unison, Gold and Glass and Lance and Holley all respond with a firm, “Aye, captain.”

 

“In that case, I’ll leave you to your work,” Regina says. “Three-sixty, sergeant.”

 

Lance snaps off a salute. “Three-sixty, ma’am.”

 

“Dismissed.”

 

And that’s that. The Quorum soldiers board the shuttle and prepare for takeoff. Regina saunters down the ramp, catches Emma’s eye, and cants her head. Her jaw is, again, tight as an airlock gate. 

 

“Marshal,” she says.

 

Emma accidentally-on-purpose bumps her shoulder on the way up. 

 

“See you soon, cap,” she says.

 

 _Eighteen months,_ she thinks. _Just keep moving._

 

 

     

 

 


	12. The heartbroken and the late goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to offer a quick thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, and kudo-ing. I know it's risky reading a WIP, let alone a space AU WIP, so I truly appreciate your patience and support, and your faith that I won't completely fuck this up. BTW? People start dying in this chapter. It becomes a trend. Remember, the story description includes "horror" and "mystery." Excelsior, peoples!

Alone in the command camera, Regina watches the Corsair-2 clear the hangar and pull away with thrusters low. Seconds later, its Class Four trans-light engine flares to life and rips a hole in the heavens. The shuttle appears to stretch and leap forward, shimmering briefly and vanishing through a tear in the firmament. Regina trails a fingertip across the holo-display, skimming through the broken bits of stardust Emma Swan left in her wake. 

 

She sips water - starting her third glass in less than fifteen minutes - yet her throat still feels clogged. Dozens of unspoken words lay piled in her mouth like dry crusts of bread, and she knows that a river of water couldn’t wash them down or clear them out. 

 

Emma clearly wanted her to say _something_ , that much Regina could tell from her expression and demeanor. But she didn’t push, merely waited in patient silence for Regina to set the tone so she could follow along. She didn’t even seem to take offense when the Overseer arrived and Regina dropped Emma’s hand like a hot rock. Such discretion and consideration merits more than a left-behind breakfast tray and a snappy little scorch note.

 

Regina reckons that anxiety over her embarrassing, flash-fire affection for Emma has somehow hobbled her manners. Cora Mills, for all her self-involved cruelty, raised Regina better than this. When someone helps you smother a mutiny, volunteers for a dangerous mission to protect your command, and fucks you with such passion and proficiency that you share tandem dreams of domestic bliss… well. She should have _said_ something.

 

She sips water and breathes. Sips, and breathes, and eventually speaks. 

 

“Be careful, Emma,” Regina says to the empty room. “When you get back, we’ll have dinner and we’ll talk - really talk. Because I want to know you better. And I want you to know me better as well. This exercise would require that we both remain alive and well for the foreseeable future, so don’t do anything stupid.”

 

She waits a moment, snickers at herself, and raises her water glass in tribute to this unimpressive, tardy farewell. At least she had the good sense to attempt a dry run before activating her comm link - now programmed with an alternate encrypted connection to the marshal’s audio receiver node - and speaking such nonsense directly into Emma’s ear.  

 

 _So much harder to speak romance than to enact it,_ she thinks. _Alternate plan: every time words fail me, I’ll just grab her and kiss her. Damn whoever may be watching._

 

Supporting her suspicion that the universe has a warped sense of humor, the door chime sounds and Daniel walks in, looking like death warmed over. His hands are pale and shaky as he delivers a data pad containing his third watch report. Afterward, he just stands there and stares blankly ahead, like he’s awaiting further orders or a formal dismissal.

 

Regina shuts off the holo-display and regards him with uneasy sympathy. She can’t help worrying that Daniel is still hurting or angry over the termination of their personal relationship. And she can’t help wondering if his natural intuition, along with Gold’s untimely investigations last night, has led him to understand exactly why Regina ended things. She has no wish to address either subject.  

 

She leans forward over the oval table, tries to catch his eye. “Commander?”

 

Daniel starts, looks confused and lost, as if woken from a trance. Round beads of sweat dot his forehead and upper lip. “Sorry?”

 

“Is there something you wish to discuss?” she asks, fervently hoping that he’ll say _no_.

 

He pauses, lifts a hand and leaves it hanging in the air, an aborted gesture of some sort. “You spent the night with the marshal,” he begins, offering no avenue for denial or explanation. Regina has always respected his emotional intuition, the way he catches onto things so quickly, but _damn_ his timing. “I don’t understand why that’s… I mean… I thought you _hated_ her.”

 

 _And away we go._ Regina takes a deep breath, perches on the edge of the table in an open, casual pose. At least, that’s the look she’s trying for; she has no way of knowing how it appears to Daniel. Regardless of how he receives her body language or her words, Regina tries to give him the courtesy of frank honesty.  

 

“I made incorrect assumptions about Emma Swan, assumptions that colored my attitude, but I never hated her,” she says. “In light of our recent interactions, I’ve come to understand that our mutual animosity may have been rooted in sublimated attraction.”

 

Daniel relaxes, almost laughs. He does smile, though just barely, as he wipes beads of sweat from his forehead. “Your _recent_ interactions. So it’s a new thing.”

 

It takes Regina a moment to understand what he’s implying. Then she shakes her head, quite firmly. “I wasn’t seeing her while you and I were… I wouldn’t do that. Once I knew that’s where we were headed -”

 

“You ended things with me.” Daniel nods and frowns. He takes a breath, grinding and short and apparently pained. “I appreciate the consideration. It’s difficult enough realizing that you and I were never going to…develop. I don’t think I could handle the crew looking at me like a fool.”

 

Regina both feels and hears her back teeth snap together. “And just how did the crew become aware of our personal relationship?”

 

“Damned if I know. I never told anyone,” Daniel says, swallowing hard. “But Sidney Glass came to see me this morning, and he obviously knew about us.”

 

Her jaw clenches so hard that Regina becomes _aware_ of every tooth in her head. “Sidney.”

 

“Yeah, that was strange. He showed up at end of watch and started talking about how much he appreciated your faith in him, saying that he wouldn’t let you down.” Daniel pauses, swallows hard again. “Could I get some water?”

 

Regina slides off the table and hands him her mostly full third glass. He chugs it down and clears his throat. “Sidney’s always a little weird, but he was so friendly that it gave me the cold shivers. He brought me _tea_ , Regina.”

 

“Tea?” She raises a brow, wonders what the hell Sidney was playing at, and why he tried to double back and see Daniel again before the Corsair-2 launched this morning.

 

“He said it would help me sleep,” Daniel explains. “I haven’t been resting well the past couple of days, and I guess it shows.”

 

 _Another crewman with nightmares?_ Regina wonders, though she doesn’t get the chance to ask about his sleep troubles before Daniel gets back on topic.

 

“Anyway, Sidney kept insisting that despite my ‘personal obligations’ toward you, I shouldn’t worry about your future, that he would ‘dutifully see to the captain’s needs,’” Daniel says, framing his words with air quotes.

 

Regina infers something dark and ominous, and her stomach clenches. “Did you feel that he was testing you, or threatening you in any way?” she asks.

 

“He didn’t say anything overtly hostile, toward me _or_ you. I would have punched him flat.” Daniel tries to smile, but his mouth bends into a pained grimace. He rubs hard at his chest, then his neck and jaw. Takes two unsteady steps toward the captain. “Regina, I think… something’s wrong with me.”

 

The words are barely out of his mouth before Daniel pitches forward, bracing his hands against the table, grunting in pain. Regina slips her arms around his chest and guides him to sit down on the floor. She mentally catalogues his symptoms and presumes he’s experiencing a heart attack, which shouldn’t be possible since Daniel’s medical profile indicates optimal physical condition. 

 

“You’re going to be okay,” she tells him, forcing her voice to remain calm and even. She activates her comm link and places a direct call to Dr. Alan Whale. “Doctor, I need medical aid in the command camera. Commander Hayes is having a possible cardiac episode.”

 

 _“Acknowledged, captain. Proceeding,”_ Whale replies.

 

“Help is on the way,” Regina tells Daniel. He’s sweaty and shaking and squirming toward the floor, instinctively wanting to lie down. Something tells Regina not to allow that - a faint memory of her father crawling in the leaves, gasping for breath - so she forces Daniel to crook his knees and stay in a half-seated position. She wraps an arm around his shoulders, squeezes his hand. “Breathe, Daniel. Breathe.”

 

He looks up at her, white-faced and terrified, tears forming in his blue eyes. “It hurts,” he says, “all over.”

 

“Hold on,” she says, soothing and rocking him even as his fingers clench painfully around her hand.

 

“Funny,” he says, faintly, voice barely a whisper. “Dreamed about this.”

 

“Hold on. Breathe.”

 

“Witch,” he says, and taps a gnarled fist against his chest. “Ripped it right out.”

 

“Breathe,” she says. 

 

“She looked kinda like you.”

 

Regina squints at Daniel, gives him a hard shake as his eyes glass over and dim. “Commander! Hold on!” she shouts, finally losing her grip on her self-control. A good man - her first officer, her friend, her former lover - is dying in her arms. She shouts his name into his ear, but he does not react. She flings him to the floor and begins chest compressions, attempting to bully his heart back to work. 

 

She’s still doing this two minutes later when Dr. Whale and Nurse Nan Ratched arrive. They move Regina aside and administer CPR, and drugs, and shocks.

 

Though Daniel revives briefly, barely long enough to vomit liquid and dark bile onto the carpet, their efforts ultimately fail. After fifteen minutes of unsuccessful treatment, Whale consults his medical pad. He looks up the medical preferences of Commander Daniel Hayes and discovers - to his great surprise - that the robustly healthy 33 year-old man has explicitly requested no extreme life-saving measures and opted against cryogenic preservation.

 

“That can’t be,” Regina protests. “You have to do _something_!”

 

“I’ve exhausted my options, captain,” Whale says. He peels three defibrillation coils from Daniel’s bare chest and calls time of death at 09:31 hours. The doctor is sweating and tired and obviously distraught, but his voice is hard and slightly angry. “Quorum procedures are quite strict when it comes to end of life care. Commander Hayes’ preferences are on file, so his DNA as a patient sample won’t unlock the trauma surgical pods. I can’t get clearance to operate, or even put him on life support.”

 

“Then take _my_ DNA,” Regina insists, yanking up her sleeve and offering her arm. “I know I opted for any and all life-saving measures.”

 

Nurse Ratched inhales sharply and touches a hand to her arched magenta hair. She appears scandalized that the captain would ask such a thing. Whale simply shakes his head. “That doesn’t work,” he says. “Your stable vitals will contraindicate medical treatment. And even if we induced cardiac stress in you to activate a trauma pod, the monitoring system takes redundant DNA samples during all procedures. One failed match and the surgery would abort, leaving the commander half-flayed and still fully dead.”

 

Regina blinks at him. She feels cool and removed now, understands she’s probably in shock, but she remains lucid enough to comprehend what Dr. Whale is saying. “You’ve tried to bypass these strictures before.”

 

Whale offers a thin smile. “I can neither confirm nor deny, captain,” he says. “It’s my understanding that doctors of old were free to act with discretion. Sadly, in this present circumstance, I am stripped of those powers and serve only as a functionary.”

 

Regina feels a tiny flame burst to life, a blue flare birthed in the recesses of her mind. For the first time in her life she feels resentment toward the Quorum, feels its rules are excessive and confining, feels like shredding all those precious, protective protocols and jettisoning the lot into space. 

 

This feeling is completely alien to Regina, who grew up rich in the middle of a class war. During her childhood and adolescence, every newscast was dominated by horrific accounts of rebel attacks. The rebels bombed schools and hospitals in affluent communities. The rebels kidnapped scions of wealthy families and executed these privileged children on live global net feeds. The Quorum was the only thing standing between these blood-thirsty anonymous dissidents and tender little morsels like Regina Mills. 

 

From the time she was old enough to feel fear and understand her own mortality, Regina believed that Quorum soldiers were the good guys. She believed this simply because _they_ didn’t want her dead. Later, she came to appreciate how the Quorum rose to power on a platform of fairness and inclusion, combining secular humanist beliefs with unilateral policies of sexuality and gender equality. Everyone who attained medical and behavioral clearance had a place in the Quorum ranks, for as long as they wished to serve.

 

Some soldiers fought the rebels to defend freedom on Earth. Some pioneered the future of mankind by terraforming off-world colonies. Some captained spacefaring ships into the black unknown in order to escape forced marriage to elderly industrial magnates. Fortunately, her Quorum recruiters were amenable to helping a smart girl flee her domineering mother; so long as Regina was physically sound and mentally sane, they didn’t care if she had mommy issues. 

 

Regina wasn’t proud of her motivation for joining the Quorum, but she has always been proud of her accomplishments within the organization. She graduated the academy with full academic honors and matriculated to command college two full years ahead of her peers. She always finished course requirements early because, without family or a social life, she had naught else to do but buckle down and work her way into space. The Quorum rewarded her dedication with a ship and a mission, and gave Regina her first real taste of self-determination, since all decisions on a starship ostensibly go through the captain. 

 

Looking down at the lifeless body of Daniel Hayes, she realizes that her command is largely an illusion. In service, individual choice lives only in the margins of the page; the body consists of unalterable rules, black and permanent as scorch notes, written by the Quorum.

 

“We are all of us functionaries, doctor,” Regina finally says. She leans down to brush a hand over Daniel’s mussed hair, and notices a shred of tea clinging to the corner of his mouth. She can’t help wondering if there is a reason for his senseless demise, if there is someone to blame, someone to _punish_. That might make Regina feel better, if only the leading suspect for malfeasance wasn’t currently deployed on a sensitive mission with her chief science officer… and her Emma. 

 

Even though Whale doesn’t deserve it, Regina puts a sharp edge on her next words, just so she’s fully understood. “Record your findings according to protocol, but neither you nor Nurse Ratched will speak a word about Commander Hayes’ death. _Tell no one._ Doctor, you will personally run a full toxicology and anomalous compound screen and promptly inform me of the results.”

 

“A _full_ screen?” he says, eyes goggling. “Captain, testing for all trace chemical compounds could take twenty-four hours to complete.”

 

Regina cuts her eyes toward him, slicing deep as she can. “I spoke plainly, doctor?”

 

He sighs, nods. “You did indeed. I’ll get right on that,” says Whale. He motions to the door, and Ratched brings in a mag-lev stretcher. They lower the bed to the floor and slide Daniel’s limp body on board, then zip him up inside an opaque temperature regulating polytherm bag. 

 

“I’m very sorry, captain,” Whale says, as the door snicks shut.

 

Regina waits a few moments, breathing in silence, thinking. She calls Lt. Killian Jones and assigns him to cover bridge duty for the rest of the morning. She calls a cleaning crew and instructs them to collect the puddled vomit and take it to Dr. Whale’s lab. She calls the commissary and confirms, to her disappointment, that the morning's dishes (including mugs from the tea order delivered to Sidney Glass) have already been scrubbed clean. 

 

She returns to her quarters, takes her still-warm Montblanc laser pen and writes a note of condolence to Daniel’s parents, two Wyoming horse ranchers who raised him well and loved him fiercely. The note will be scanned and transmitted through eighteen communications relay stations, all the way back to Earth, once her investigation into his death is complete.

 

Regina wanders through her rooms, noting the neatly made bed and the clean kitchen. The sheets are fresh and Daniel’s coffee cup has long since been airwashed. There’s no sign he was ever even here. Daniel Hayes left no traces behind - no shirt, no comb, no toothwash - because Regina never allowed him to make a beachhead in her life. She wonders if she could have loved him, or at least come close to loving him, if only she had pretended, if only she had _tried_ _harder_ to feel for him…  

 

In the lift, she presses the button for Deck 4. She walks slowly, because there’s no need to hurry now, no arms to hurry into. She overrides the door lock and enters Emma Swan’s quarters. The kitchen still smells of coffee and cinnamon cakes. Her note is missing from the breakfast tray. Regina wonders if Emma took it with her, if the marshal is that sentimental.

 

 _I should have said something,_ she tells herself.

 

The bedroom seems unbalanced, relative to its normal state of perfect order. Emma’s slim bed is bare, stripped of the sex-trashed sheets and blue floral duvet. Several bottles and cases are missing from her shelves. Medicine and weapons, Regina recalls. Tools of the trade. 

 

Slung on a hook behind the bedroom door is Emma’s ballistic leather jacket. Defaulted to a shadowy matte black, it’s barely noticeable. Regina squeezes the right cuff and clicks through the color palette until the tint cells shine Carmine red. She takes off her Quorum uniform top and slides into Emma’s jacket. The smell that surrounds her - a swirl of leather and flora and gun oil - imparts a surge of comfort, a feeling of wellness that Regina can’t account for.

 

She doesn’t have to _try_ to feel it. When she thinks of Emma, it’s just there. With tears pricking her eyes, Regina inserts her comm link into her ear and triggers the alternate broadcast channel. 

 

“Be careful, Emma,” she says to the empty room. “Specifically, watch your back around Sidney; he may be more dangerous than we know. I trust you to handle yourself accordingly.”

 

Regina tucks her mouth inside the jacket’s tab collar, brushing her lips against the soft lining.

 

“When you get back, we’ll have dinner and we’ll talk - really talk. Because I want to know you better, Emma, and I want you to know me better, too. This will require that we both remain alive and well for the foreseeable future, so please… please don’t do anything stupid.”

 

She slumps on the edge of the bed. Before long, she’s lying down and curling her arms around the foam pillow that smells faintly of her own mint shampoo.

 

“I should have gone back to sleep with you this morning,” Regina says, hoping Emma hears. “That damned white room looks awfully good right about now.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
